
JULIA AUGUSTA SCHWARTZ 




Copyright U?_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 




1 HE WAS A REAL BUTTERFLY NOW, IN A GARDEN WORLD OF LEAVES.' 

{Frontispiece. See p. 88 



WONDERFUL 
LITTLE LIVES 



By 

JULIA AUGUSTA SCHWARTZ 

Author of " Wilderness Babies," " Elinor's College 
Career," " Five Little Strangers," etc. 



Illustrated from drawings by 
CLARA E. ATWOOD 



BOSTON 
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 







Copyright, 1909, 
By Little, Brown, and Company. 

All rights reserved 



Published, October, 1909 



Electrotyped and Printed by 
THE COLONIAL PRESS 
C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U.S.A. 



248778 



CONTENTS 



I. The Lucky Little Grasshopper 
II. The Adventures of an Earthworm 
III. Mischievous Madam Mosquito . 



IV. The Most Beautiful One in the Garden 69 



V, The Untidy Fly . . . . 

VI. The Spider Who Would A-Hunting Go 

VII. This is the House the Ant Built . 

VIII. How Doth the Little Busy Bee . 
IX. Hop-Flop, the Toad .... 

X. Robin Bright Eyes . 



PAGE 
1 

23 

47 



99 
119 
145 
173 
199 
225 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

♦ 

PAGE 

" He was a real Butterfly now, in a garden 

world of leaves " . . . . Frontispiece 
" Out of the crack peered two round eyes in 

a funny little face " 7 

" Then he stretched out his head, now this 

way, now that " 34 

" Her skin split, and out of the crack crawled 

a grown up mosquito " . . . . . 60 
"in a hammock under a maple two children 

were swinging " 65 

" Then he crept out on a juicy leaf and ate 

AND ATE " 84 

" he then took a few sucks at a dead beetle " 117 
" For two or three weeks the young spiders 

rode with their mother wherever she 

went" 130 

" There were perils in the air as well as on 

the ground " 141 

" Then came the nip, nip, from behind " . 146 

" Another bee crawled up and clung to her, 

and another caught hold of that one " . 188 
" Even now he was not entirely grown up " . 211 
" The mother Robin came flying home with a 

worm in her bill " 229 

" Then Bright Eyes piped up in his weak shrill 

little voice " 248 



THE LUCKY LITTLE GRASS- 
HOPPER 



WONDERFUL 
LITTLE LIVES 



THE LUCKY LITTLE GRASS- 
HOPPER 

I. GRASSHOPPER GREEN LEARNS TO JUMP 

THERE was once a beautiful gar- 
den, and in the garden grew all 
sorts of delightful things. Black- 
berry vines spread in a tangle over the stone 
wall. An old apple tree stood beside a sum- 
mer-house covered with climbing roses. A 
row of currant bushes stretched along the 
grape arbor. Violets and hepaticas bloomed 
beneath the cherry trees. Peach trees lifted 
their low branches in sheltered corners. Li- 
lacs bordered the gravel paths, and peonies 



4 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

were planted here and there on the sunny 
lawn. 

But trees and flowers were not the only 
delightful things that grew in the garden. 
Ah, no, indeed! This garden was the home 
of many wonderful little creatures. But- 
terflies hovered over the flowers. Bees 
hummed about the blossoming fruit trees. 
Ants hurried to and fro around their brown 
hills at the edge of the path, and pretty 
spiders with glistening eyes spun their 
silken webs from leaf to leaf. 

Filmy-winged mosquitoes flitted out at 
twilight. Now and then a fly on its way 
to the cottage at one end of the garden 
rested for a moment on a budding twig. 
A fat toad blinked solemnly out from its 
hole under a stone. A nestful of young 
birds twittered in every tree overhead, and 
in the ground under foot hundreds of 
earthworms patiently burrowed their way 
hither and thither, making fresh soil for 
the garden. 

Oh, this garden was a pleasant place in 



THE LUCKY GRASSHOPPER 5 

the gay spring weather, when Grasshopper 
Green came there to live! Now where do 
you suppose he came from? He came 
right up out of the ground. 

All night long the warm spring rain had 
been falling gently. It trickled over the 
young leaves on the trees. It sent tiny 
beads of water rolling down the new blades 
of grass, and it soaked into the loose brown 
soil of the freshly spaded flower-beds. 

Before dawn the clouds drifted away, 
leaving the sky clear blue. When the sun 
rose, it twinkled upon many a new little 
leaf that had uncurled during the night. 
The grass had grown longer. The cherry 
trees had budded. The violets were almost 
in bloom. Here and there, in the brown 
beds, the stem of a seedling was pulling 
its tip of folded leaflets from the soil. 

On the lawn beyond the path a robin 
redbreast was hunting for earthworms. He 
cocked his head on one side and stood still 
for a moment, with his bright eyes search- 
ing the ground. Then he gave a quick 



6 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

little run across the grass and darted his 
beak down to catch a mouthful of break- 
fast. 

Presently he scuttled across to the let- 
tuce bed, and braced himself to drag out 
a worm that had hooked its tail bristles into 
the top of its burrow. It was lucky that 
he had his back to the path, and could not 
see something that began to stir at the edge 
of the gravel. 

Something alive was pushing up from 
under the ground. It was not a plant, 
because a plant either comes pricking 
straight through with the pointed tip of 
its rolled up leaves, like a spear of corn, 
or else it heaves up its humped stem slowly 
and steadily, as a bean seedling does. But 
this was different. A bit of the hard soil 
rose slowly in a tiny arch and then sud- 
denly cracked open. Out of the crack 
peered two round eyes in a funny little 
face. It was a baby grasshopper. 

The mother grasshopper had laid her 
eggs just under the surface of the soil the 



THE LUCKY GRASSHOPPER 



autumn before. Now, when the warm 
spring days had come, her babies began to 




hatch out and push blindly up toward the 
air and light. 

This lively fellow kicked his way out, 
waved the two thread-like feelers in front 
of his eyes, lifted his two front legs to wipe 



8 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

the dirt from his face, shook his two middle 
legs clean, and scraped his two hind legs 
over his back. Then he started out to see 
the world. 

As I have told you before, it was lucky 
for him that the robin was so busy swallow- 
ing the worm that he did not pay any at- 
tention to the newcomer. All birds are 
fond of grasshoppers for breakfast — or 
for dinner or any other meal, doubtless. 

After resting a moment to breathe the 
air into his wee body, the young grasshop- 
per began to walk forward with all six of 
his legs till he reached the grassy border of 
the lettuce bed. Of course he was looking 
for something to eat; that is what every 
baby wants the very first thing. When his 
feelers touched the nearest blade of grass, 
he gave them a twitch and went climbing 
straight up the stem. 

Now how do you suppose he could do 
that without slipping down? It was be- 
cause each of his feet had two claws, and 
between the two claws was a flat little pad 



THE LUCKY GRASSHOPPER 9 

fringed with hairs. When he climbed up 
the grass blade, he stuck his claws into 
it. From the tip of every hair on each pad 
oozed a drop of sticky stuff that fastened 
his foot firm till he was ready to lift it to 
take another step. 

So up the grass he walked, and began 
to eat. His mouth was on the under side 
of his big little head, ready to bite off and 
chew whatever he found good to eat. The 
most convenient thing to eat was the very 
grass on which he was standing. He 
opened his strong little jaws, took a bite 
and chewed it fine and swallowed it. 

He kept on biting out pieces and chew- 
ing them up fine and swallowing them till 
he had eaten a scallop out of the edge of 
the leaf. Then he walked on farther and 
bit out another scallop. He was having 
the best kind of a time, with his jaws going 
chump, chump, chump. The more he ate, 
the sooner he would grow to be a big grass- 
hopper with wings as well as legs. Even 
as a baby he looked a good deal like his 



10 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

father, except that he was so much smaller 
and had no wings at all. 

When evening came, he swung around 
underneath the blade of grass and glued 
his feet fast so that he might not fall off 
while he was asleep. Early in the morning 
he woke up slowly, but he did not move 
for quite a while. The cool air made him 
feel stiff at first. Or it may be that his wee 
jaws ached somewhat after his busy chew- 
ing of the day before. 

By and by, as the sun's rays became 
warmer, he stirred drowsily and stretched 
out his long hind legs, combing one with 
the other. Yes, indeed, he could really use 
them like combs, for the longest slender 
joint of each one had a row of sharp spines 
like the teeth of a comb. He could rub 
them over his small green body too, brush- 
ing off every speck of dust. They were 
remarkable legs. Only fancy! As soon as 
he grew up, he would be able to sing with 
them. But best and most important of all 
to him was their power of jumping. Lit- 



THE LUCKY GRASSHOPPER 11 

tie Grasshopper Green was the champion 
jumper of the whole garden. 

However on this particular morning he 
did not yet know that he could jump. He 
had never even tried it. He just went 
crawling over the grass-blade step by step, 
with his hind legs folded so that the knees 
hunched high above his back. His knees 
bent in the opposite direction from the 
way ours do. His knees were the best 
kind for him, and ours are the best kind 
for us. 

When he reached the tip of the leaf he 
drew both legs close to his body and then 
suddenly straightened them out. Away he 
went flying through the air as if he had 
been shot from a spring-board. 

That must have been surprising. He 
landed with a bump right in the middle 
of the lettuce bed. It may be that the jar 
made him a bit dizzy at first. As soon as 
his head felt steady again, he found a ten- 
der young lettuce plant just under his 
mouth. He opened his jaws and took a 



12 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

big bite. Oh! but it tasted delicious. So 
he ate and ate till he ate it all up, 'way 
down to the ground. 

Then he hunted for another plant, and 
ate that too. Some of his many brothers 
and sisters were already eating the lettuce. 
There was hardly enough to go around, 
for the plants had not had time to grow 
much yet. Before long every bit of green 
leaf had been eaten up by the hungry small 
creatures. 

When Grasshopper Green could not find 
another bite anywhere near, he drew up 
his hind legs close to his body, and then 
quickly straightened them out. Away he 
sailed through the air again. This time 
he came down ker-plunk on a hard pebble 
in the middle of the garden path. If he 
had held his legs stiff and straight, instead 
of bending them at their limber joints, he 
might have broken a pair or two. You 
know how it shakes you up and down your 
spine if you land without bending your 
knees after taking a jump. You have to 



THE LUCKY GRASSHOPPER 13 

be taught how to jump in the right way, 
but the grasshopper knew how from the 
very first day of his life. 

After touching the pebble with his feel- 
ers and deciding that it was not good to 
eat, he jumped again. This time, though 
he jumped in the right way, he came down 
in the wrong place. Oh, it was about the 
most dangerous spot for him in the whole 
garden. It was right in front of a hen 
that had flown over the wall and was 
scratching in the path. 

There was a surprised cluck followed 
by a whirr of feathers and a scamper of 
two stout feet. Her wide yellow beak 
came swooping downward. He did not 
stop to think. He did not know who she 
was or what she wanted, for he had never 
met a hen before. But he felt the rush of 
air as she scuttled toward him, and he drew 
up his legs exactly in time, because some- 
how he thought that he had better be go- 
ing. Away he shot over her head just as 
her beak snapped shut on a mouthful of 



14 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

gravel snatched from the spot where he had 
been standing half a moment before. 

II. GRASSHOPPER GREEN LEARNS TO FLY 

§oon after this narrow escape, a strange 
thing happened. This was the way of it. 
He kept on eating and eating and eating, 
and the more he ate, the fatter he grew. 
The fatter he grew, the tighter his skin 
seemed. The skin of an insect is made of 
horny stuff that never grows after it once 
hardens on the outside of its small owner. 
Naturally the bigger he grew inside his 
skin, the more pinched and uncomfortable 
he felt. Finally — what do you suppose? 
— his skin cracked and split open. He 
crawled outside of his own skin and pushed 
it off all his legs. There he was in a soft 
new skin that had been growing under- 
neath the old one. 

The new skin was bright and fresh, and 
plenty big enough to fit without squeezing 
him. He waited a few minutes till it had 
hardened in the air, because it was danger- 



THE LUCKY GRASSHOPPER 15 

ous for him to go out to eat while his skin 
was still soft. If he had done that, he 
might have hurt himself by bumping 
against a stick or a stone. Or a sharp tip 
of a grass blade might have pricked clear 
through his body when he came down after 
a long jump. He never knew where he 
would land. 

He wore this new skin till he grew too 
big for it. Then it split as the first had 
done, and he crawled out in a newer, larger 
suit. He kept on in this way for two or 
three months till he was entirely grown up. 
Meanwhile he had changed his skin five or 
six times. After the first change, his wings 
began to grow. Each new skin had larger 
wings, till at last they were big enough to 
use in flying. His body was grayish green, 
and his wings were brown. 

Ah, but that was delightful! It was bet- 
ter than jumping. The first time he tried 
them, perhaps he meant only to jump. He 
drew up his long hind legs and straight- 
ened them out as usual. When he was high 



16 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

in the air, somehow his wings spread open 
and away he went whirring for the longest 
jump he ever had taken yet. 

He really had two pairs of wings. One 
pair were straight and stiff and hard. 
While he was flying, this pair were spread 
out and hooked so that they would stay 
open. Beneath them were two gauzy 
wings. He flew with these, beating them 
to and fro very fast. When he stopped 
moving them, they folded up like fans 
close to his body. The two stiff wings 
unhooked and shut down close over the 
flying wings. These wing-covers, as they 
are called, kept the gauzy wings from get- 
ting scratched and torn. 

One summer afternoon, when the garden 
lay drowsing in the sunshine and even the 
birds were quiet among the branches over- 
head, suddenly the young grasshopper be- 
gan to sing. Shrill and loud his song rose 
in the stillness, — fizz, fizz, fizz ! Then it 
stopped all at once. Maybe he was aston- 
ished at himself. He did not sing from his 



THE LUCKY GRASSHOPPER 17 

mouth and throat. He was only standing 
in a tuft of grass and rubbing the broad 
joint of his long hind legs against the edge 
of his folded wing-covers. He may have 
been lonely there all by himself. He sang 
so that some other grasshopper might know 
where to find him. 

But his song was so loud that something 
else heard him too. A bird darted down 
from the boughs of a maple tree and flut- 
tered above the spot where Grasshopper 
Green was singing. She wanted to catch 
him to feed to her nestful of hungry young 
ones. She went hopping around, hunting 
for him. 

Grasshopper Green saw her shadow flit- 
ting hither and thither. He could hear the 
rustle of her wings and the patter of her 
feet. He stopped singing and sat so still 
that he seemed like a bit of wood or grass 
himself. Perhaps she would not notice 
him, for a bird cannot see motionless things 
nearly so well as those that are moving. 

But nearer and nearer she hopped, now 



18 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

pecking at a twig, now twitching at a leaf, 
now cocking her head to look under a 
drooping blade of green. Tap, tap, tap! 
She was hammering at a pebble wedged 
among the roots of the sod. A small spider 
ran from beneath it and scampered farther 
into the fairy wilderness of tall thick grasses 
where the grasshopper was hiding. Mother 
Bird darted after him, stretching out her 
neck and opening her bill. 

Grasshopper Green heard her coming. 
He was so frightened that he could not 
keep still another instant. He drew up his 
legs suddenly. Ah! she had spied him. 
That small ridged bump there was not a 
twig at all. It was a fat, delicious little 
grasshopper. Forgetting about the fleeing 
many-legged brown spider, she made a 
swift dash toward the juicy morsel within 
easy reach. 

Snap! She had missed him as he jumped. 
But a moment later she was flying after 
him. Swoop! She had caught him by the 
tip of one whirring wing. Flap, flap, flap! 



THE LUCKY GRASSHOPPER 19 

he beat the other to and fro as he twisted 
and squirmed to get free. It was lucky 
for him that these gauzy wings were so 
delicate and easily torn. Before Mother 
Bird could seize a firmer grip, the sharp 
edges of her beak had snipped through the 
frail bit of gauze. Down dropped Grass- 
hopper Green to the ground and quickly 
slid under a leaf to hide. 

Just then the biggest baby bird in the 
nest in the maple gave such a shrill peep 
that his mother flew home as fast as she 
could to see what was the matter. Really 
the only trouble was that the little fellow 
thought he was starving and could not wait 
another minute for something to eat. It 
would have been better for him if he had 
kept quiet a moment longer till his mother 
had caught the grasshopper. Now, after 
losing so much time, she could not find him, 
though she hunted under every leaf near 
the spot where he had dropped. He had 
already taken a fresh jump upward and 
gone sailing away toward the row of cur- 



20 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

rant bushes. His wings were quite as use- 
ful as before, even if one of them did have 
a ragged notch in its tip. 

All summer long Grasshopper Green 
lived in the beautiful garden. Every day 
was filled with exciting escapes. Many a 
time he was chased by a hungry bird, or 
snapped at by a greedy dragon-fly. More 
than once he just missed being gobbled 
down by the old toad that sat blinking in 
shady corners. Two or three times, after 
a joyous whirring flight above the flowers, 
he landed plump in the middle of a spider's 
thick silky web. He always managed to 
kick loose from the entangling threads be- 
fore the owner came hurrying to see what 
she had caught in her snare. 

He had a chance to get acquainted with 
all the small creatures who shared the gar- 
den with him. When he went walking, he 
could meet those who lived on the ground. 
When he went flying, he could see those 
who spent their time in the air. Sometimes 
he swung on a grass blade beside a hungry 



THE LUCKY GRASSHOPPER 21 

caterpillar. Sometimes he crawled from 
leaf to leaf of a plant where ants were hur- 
rying busily to and fro. 

Once he met a little cousin of his own 
who happened to come jumping over the 
stone wall on his way toward a meadow 
near a pond some distance farther along. 
This visitor's slender body was such a bright 
green that it made our garden grasshopper 
look a dusty brown beside him. He was 
different, too, in having much longer feel- 
ers. Perhaps he told how cool and delight- 
ful it was to live amid the tangled grasses 
in the damp meadow instead of in the gar- 
den. 

But Grasshopper Green was too happy 
where he was to think of leaving his home. 
Very likely he might have felt different 
about it if he had not had plenty to eat. 
Some years, when thousands and thousands 
of his brothers hatch out all at once in the 
mountain parks, they cannot find enough 
food there. So, after devouring every leaf, 
they rise in the air and fly in an immense 



22 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

whirring cloud toward the green farms on 
the prairies. They march on over the land, 
like a hungry army, leaving the trees 
stripped and the fields bare behind them. 

Our grasshopper, however, was almost 
the only one who lived to grow up in the 
garden this summer, and his small jaws 
could not do much harm. No wonder he 
was contented! Every day brought some 
new excitement. Now he jumped this way 
to find a tender leaf to eat. Now he 
jumped that way to avoid being eaten him- 
self. Hither and thither he flew, this min- 
ute hopping into danger, and the next min- 
ute hopping out of it again. Indeed, you 
see, Grasshopper Green was a lucky young 
fellow to have been born in this beautiful 
garden. 



II 

THE ADVENTURES OF AN 
EARTHWORM 



II 

THE ADVENTURES OF AN 
EARTHWORM 

I. HOW HE WALKED WITHOUT LEGS 

ONE evening when Grasshopper 
Green was fast asleep, with his feet 
glued safely to the under side of 
, a grapevine leaf, a new little creature came 
squirming up out of the ground below. It 
was a baby earthworm. He had hatched 
from a tiny egg buried in the soil. The 
first thing he did was to twist and wriggle 
this way and that as he pushed his pointed 
head up through the soft earth to the air 
above. 

After he reached the top, he raised his 
head and swayed it to and fro to find out 
what the world was like. And now what 
do you think? He could not see a single 



26 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

thing, or hear a single sound. He had no 
eyes or ears or nose. He had no arms or 
legs. He was only a soft round worm with 
a bit of a mouth on the under side of his 
pointed head. 

In the darkness he kept swaying to and 
fro. He could feel the damp air against 
his skin. Some of the air soaked into his 
body through tiny holes in his skin, ever 
so much tinier than the prick of a pin. The 
fresh air kept his blood red and pure. It 
made him feel happy and lively. He moved 
his head faster and pulled his tail out 
of the ground. He was ready to hunt for 
something to eat. 

So he set out on his travels. Travelling 
was slow work for him, because he had no 
real legs to use in walking. The best he 
could do was to wriggle over the ground 
with the help of some stiff little bristles 
that grew on his body. His body was 
made up of many joints or rings set close 
together. On each ring grew eight of these 
bristles. 



THE EARTHWORM 27 

When he wanted to travel, he stretched 
out his head as far as he could, and hooked 
the bristles nearest his head into the ground. 
Then he unhooked the bristles that had been 
holding him steady at his other end, and 
drew his body up thick and short. When 
he was as short as he could be, he dug his 
tail bristles into the ground to hold him 
steady again, while he stretched his body 
out long and thin. When he was as long 
as he could stretch, he dug in his front 
bristles again, and drew himself up short 
just as before. It was too hard work to 
be very much fun, you see. 

Luckily for this wee worm, his mother 
had laid her eggs in the middle of a bed 
of onions beside the grape arbor. He had 
hardly wriggled two inches before he al- 
most touched the stem of a young onion 
plant. He stopped and began to move his 
head to and fro, as if he were sniffing the 
onion. Perhaps he smelled it through his 
skin. When at last he really rubbed 
against the plant, he seized a bit between 



28 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

his upper and lower lip, and sucked it into 
his mouth. Ah, but it tasted delicious! So 
he swallowed it down as quickly as he could, 
and pinched off another bit of onion with 
his soft lips. 

He swallowed each mouthful by squeez- 
ing it down his throat. He had no teeth 
for chewing, but after the food had been 
swallowed, it was ground fine between 
specks of stones inside him. Very likely 
he had swallowed these specks of stones 
while he was pushing his way up from his 
empty egg shell to the air above. Now 
they were exactly what he needed for 
grinding up his food. 

Of course he could eat much faster than 
if he had been obliged to stop and chew 
every bite. He ate and ate and ate, and 
his little body stretched out like India rub- 
ber to hold the food. When he was so 
round and tight and full that he felt almost 
as if he were going to burst, he stopped 
eating and rested for a while. 

The baby earthworm lay quiet and happy 



THE EARTHWORM 29 

under the onion plant. He was happy be- 
cause he had eaten all he wanted, and be- 
cause the dewy night air felt pleasant on 
his skin. 

Far above him the stars twinkled in the 
sky; but he could not see them. A breeze 
whispered among the leaves of the trees in 
the garden; a bird overhead chirped sleep- 
ily; the grasses rustled here and there under 
the foot of some small hurrying creature. 
But the baby earthworm could not hear 
these sounds. He felt the earth under him, 
and the air around him, and the food in- 
side him. And just then he did not care 
about anything else in the whole, wide, 
wonderful, beautiful world. 

While he rested, the food inside his body 
was ground up fine and began to be 
changed into blood. The new blood made 
him grow a little larger. Even as a baby, 
you know, he looked like the grown-up 
earthworms, except that his body had not 
so many rings. As he grew, he would have 
more rings; for the last ring at the end of 



30 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

his tail would divide into two rings. Pretty- 
soon the last ring of the two new ones 
would divide into two, and then the last 
one of those two, and so on till he was all 
grown up. 

On this very first night of his life, how- 
ever, he did not grow fast enough to get 
a new ring right away. There would be 
plenty of time for that later. Now, as 
soon as he felt like working after his first 
meal of vegetables, he began to hunt around 
for a place to live. 

II. HOW HE DUG HIS HOUSE 

In some wonderful way he knew just 
what to do, though he had never been 
taught. He had never watched any other 
worm dig a hole in which to live. And yet 
he set straight to work without pausing to 
think or plan. Indeed he could not think 
even if he tried to do so, because he did not 
have that kind of a brain. He simply went 
on without thinking and did the things that 



THE EARTHWORM 31 

all earthworms do naturally because their 
parents have always done the same things. 

First he stretched out his head and felt 
of the ground, now here, now there. He 
was hunting for a firm smooth spot where 
he might begin to dig. When he found it, 
he put his mouth down close to the earth, 
opened his lips, pinched off a mouthful, and 
swallowed it. Wasn't that an astonishing 
way to dig! Then he took another bite, 
and another, and another, till he was full 
of dirt. He had eaten a hole in the ground. 
When he was so full that he could not swal- 
low any more, he pressed his body small so 
that the dirt was squeezed out. He let this 
curlycue of earth fall outside, at the top 
of his hole. It was the shape of a tiny 
worm, and is called a worm-cast. 

He dug all the rest of the night as hard 
as he could, because he was in a hurry to 
have a home of his own. Once in a while 
he found a speck of good food in the 
mouthfuls of earth. This food stayed in 
his body and helped to make new blood 



32 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

and give him strength to go on working. 
At intervals, very likely, he crawled to the 
onion plant and took a bite of it to cheer 
him on in his labor. He just loved onion! 

At last, when his hole was almost deep 
enough to hide in, the sun rose. The wee 
worm had that minute carried a load of 
earth to the top and was emptying it out- 
side. A level golden ray of sunlight shot 
across the sparkling dewdrops and glistened 
on the busy little brown body of the baby 
earthworm. Doubtless he had no idea what 
was causing him to feel so queer and fever- 
ish, for he had never before been in the sun- 
shine, you know. He shrugged his ringed 
body and squirmed and twisted his tail, and 
lifted his head and swayed it to and fro. 
Then he wriggled back into the hole, and 
cuddled down as close as he could in the 
cool moist earth. 

But that did not do him much good, for 
the sun rose higher and shone into the top 
of his little cave. In the queerest way he 
knew, without being told, exactly what he 



THE EARTHWORM 33 

ought to do next. He reached out of the 
hole with his pointed head and took hold of 
a piece of dead grass with his lips. Then 
he pulled and pulled till he had dragged 
the grass to the opening of his hole, or 
burrow, as it is called. He pulled the 
pointed tip in as far as it would go. It 
covered the top so that the sunlight could 
not shine in. Finally, in his cool shady 
home the wise little worm curled down 
cosily and rested all day long. 

Outside in the garden, the sun shone and 
the birds sang; the butterflies fluttered 
their lovely wings and the bees buzzed over 
the flowers. The grasshoppers swung on 
the grasses, and the spiders spun webs or 
went hunting. Under the ground the little 
earthworm, hidden in his new burrow, which 
he had dug all himself, lay quiet and waited 
for the dewy dark night. 

When daylight faded and the air grew 
damp and cool, the young worm woke up 
and came squirming outdoors. The first 
thing he did was to hook the bristles at the 



34 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

end of his tail into the wall of his burrow. 
Then he stretched out his head, now this 
way, now that way, till he touched a leaf 
of onion. After eating all he wanted, he 
wriggled back into his hole and began to 




dig it bigger. He rubbed the inside of his 
house smooth with his slimy body. Some- 
thing like glue oozed from his skin and 
covered the walls with a firm lining. When 
he had finished it, he had the cosiest kind 
of a little home, just large enough for one. 

III. HOW HE ESCAPED WITH HIS LIFE 

Nothing very exciting happened for a 
while. All day long he hid in his burrow, 



THE EARTHWORM 35 

and all night long he worked and ate. 
Sometimes he dragged pieces of leaves in- 
side his hole and ate them there. As he 
grew bigger and longer, he had to make 
his hole bigger and longer, too. And the 
longer he grew, the farther he could stretch 
to reach his supper. But by and by came 
a time when he had eaten every bit of green 
leaf within reach. 

That night he stretched out his head as 
far as he possibly could stretch in a circle 
all around his hole. He could not find a 
single bite of anything good to eat. So 
what do you think that reckless little worm 
did then? He unhooked his tail from the 
top of the burrow, and wriggled away over 
the ground till he touched another onion 
plant. Then he ate and ate and ate till he 
nearly burst, for he was dreadfully hungry. 
After resting a time, he wanted to return 
to his home. He squirmed off in a hurry, 
but he never, never found his way back 
again. He had lost the first little burrow 
that he ever dug in his life. 



36 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

So the next thing he had to do was to go 
to work and dig a new one. This new hole 
was like the other, except that it was larger 
and deeper. He dug it deeper, because the 
ground was getting dryer than it had been 
earlier in the summer. There were not so 
many showers to keep the soil at the sur- 
face soft and moist. It made him feel sick 
to swallow dry soil. So he burrowed down 
deep where the earth was damp and pleas- 
ant to his skin. 

One morning he had a terrible adven- 
ture. It was just at sunrise, and he had 
crawled into his burrow and lay resting 
near the top. The night had been rather 
chilly, and he felt a little numb. Though 
he certainly hated to be too hot, he also 
hated to be too cold. He was waiting per- 
haps for a bit of warmth from the sun to 
steal over him before he wriggled down to 
the deep end of the hole. Or it may 
be that he liked to stay near the dewy leaf 
that covered his door. Whatever was his 
reason, he was lying there quiet and com- 



THE EARTHWORM 37 

fortable, when suddenly something hap- 
pened. 

A quick patter of little claws, a swift 
twitch of the dewy leaf, and a robin's beak 
darted into the hole like lightning and 
snapped at the worm's soft head! That 
was a narrow escape. He had wriggled 
out of reach just in time. He squirmed on 
down to the bottom of his burrow as fast 
as he could go, and stayed there curled up 
safe and still till after the birds had all gone 
to sleep at night. Then he could come out 
and hunt for his own supper without get- 
ting into danger of being gobbled down by 
a hungry robin. 

Anybody would think that such an ex- 
perience would teach a worm to stay hid- 
den at home in the daytime. But one queer 
thing about worms, and many other crea- 
tures, too, is that they never learn anything 
new no matter how long they live. When 
they are born they know as much as their 
parents do, and they can never be taught 
anything more. 



38 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

You could never imagine how foolishly 
that little worm acted one day. It had been 
raining all night in the garden. As soon 
as he knew that a shower was falling out- 
side, that silly worm came wriggling out as 
fast as he could wriggle, and squirmed 
away over the wet ground. He did not 
even try to stay near enough so that he 
might possibly find his home again if he 
hunted carefully all around. He just went 
crawling on and on and on, without think- 
ing what might happen when morning 
should dawn. He enjoyed being out in the 
rain. 

He crawled across the onion-bed to a 
row of cabbages. There he stopped to take 
a few nibbles. Then he hurried on over 
the gravel path. On his way, he passed a 
drowned fly, and ate several mouthfuls of 
it, for he was fond of fresh meat. Once or 
twice he felt a soft round body exactly like 
his own wriggling against him, or under or 
over him. The rain had brought other 
earthworms out of their holes that night, 



THE EARTHWORM 39 

and started them on their reckless wander- 
ings. 

Finally the rain ceased, the clouds drifted 
apart, and the sun rose. Our little worm 
lay stretched out pale and thin on the path. 
He was no longer dark-colored, because he 
had swallowed no earth for hours. His 
skin was so clear that his two veins full of 
blood showed red inside his body. He was 
so tired that he could hardly move. 

But as the sunshine fell on him, he 
squirmed slowly on across the gravel, and 
dragged himself inch by inch on and on 
and on. He did not know what was ahead 
of him, or where he was going. All that 
he wanted was to wriggle somewhere out 
of the burning light and heat of the sun. 

It was lucky for him that he happened 
to crawl toward a spot of soft loose soil 
where a root of celery had been pulled up 
the day before. He pushed his head be- 
neath a wet lump of earth and drew the 
rest of his body on into the damp delight- 
ful dark little cave. There he rested all 



40 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

day, while out in the sunshine many other 
foolish worms dragged themselves blindly 
on in the glaring heat. Some were gobbled 
down by hungry birds, and others curled 
their aching little bodies round and round 
in tight coils, and lay still till they dried up 
and died. An earthworm cannot live a day 
in dry air. 

After this our young worm dug another 
burrow for a new home. You see he really 
had to have a hiding-place to save him from 
his enemies. He had no shell to protect his 
soft body from being trampled on by ani- 
mals or snapped up by a hungry bird. He 
had no teeth or sting with which to fight. 
He had no legs that he could use in run- 
ning away from danger. The only thing 
he could do for safety was to hide in a hole. 

IV. HOW HE HELPED THE GARDEN TO GROW 

And what do you suppose! This is most 
wonderful of all. Earthworms help to 
make all the gardens in the world, because 
they dig so many holes. They help by 



THE EARTHWORM 41 

swallowing their bodies full of soil and car- 
rying it up to the top of the ground when 
they dig their burrows. This makes the 
soil fine and rich so that plants can grow 
in it. The leaves which they drag into their 
burrows and tear into shreds make the soil 
rich too. There are so many millions of 
worms working in the ground that all to- 
gether they dig up tons of earth and turn 
it over and mix it fine and make it rich. 

Besides this, the air from above moves 
through their winding burrows and keeps 
the soil loose and sweet. When rain falls, 
part of the water trickles down deeper be- 
cause of the holes. Some plants grow 
faster when their roots find the smooth lit- 
tle tunnels in which they may spread and 
branch. The deaf and dumb and blind lit- 
tle earthworm is the most useful of all the 
small creatures that live in the garden. 

When our young worm had finished his 
new home, very likely he felt that he was 
safe there at last. He was careful not to 
lie too near the top in the morning, when 



42 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

robins were out hunting for their break- 
fasts. He was particular to hook his tail 
fast to the wall of his burrow whenever he 
went out in the evening. But one night a 
still more frightful adventure happened to 
him. He was chased by a mole. 

It happened in this way. He had been 
working busily for hours in digging out a 
tiny room at the very bottom of his burrow. 
He wanted to get it ready for the winter, 
as the summer was almost gone, and the 
nights were becoming long and chilly. He 
was pinching off one mouthful of earth 
after another, and swallowing them as fast 
as he could squeeze them down. 

Doubtless he must have made some sort 
of noise under the ground there. Perhaps 
his squirmings and wrigglings and muneh- 
ings sounded for inches through the earth 
around him. Well, anyhow, a hungry gray 
mole, who was making a tunnel through 
the celery-bed, heard the earthworm at 
work. She turned around in her tunnel 
and began to dig like mad in the direction 



THE EARTHWORM 43 

of the sound. She was very fond of earth- 
worms for dinner. She clawed away the 
dirt with her tiny shovel-like front paws, 
and kicked it out behind her furry little 
body as fast as she could dig. 

Now, as she was almost as big as a rat, 
she could not help making a stir with her 
shovelling and kicking. The pounding and 
thumping shook the ground around the 
busy earthworm. The instant he felt it, 
he stopped eating and wriggled up out of. 
that hole faster than he had ever wriggled 
before. Though he had never heard of a 
mole, something told him to get away from 
that spot as soon as he possibly could. 

He squirmed up to the top of his burrow, 
and waited a moment. The thumping and 
pounding seemed nearer than before, so he 
wriggled away at his very best gait, stretch- 
ing out his head and drawing up his tail, 
stretching out his head and drawing up his 
tail, stretching out his head and drawing 
up his tail, till he bumped into a celery 
stalk and curled down to rest. He kept 



44 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

still and did not move even the ring at the 
tip of his tail. This was lucky for him, 
because the hungry mole had plowed her 
way clear up to the top of the worm's 
empty burrow and was poking out her head 
to sniff around in the dark at that very 
minute. 

As soon as the earthworm felt able to 
work, he was obliged to dig another hole. 
This one he wanted to make deeper than 
any of the others, because winter was com- 
ing. In winter the ground freezes hard on 
top, just as water freezes into ice on the 
surface of a pond. Digging on a cool night 
in autumn was slow work, because the cold 
made the worm feel numb and lazy. Some- 
times his soft body felt too stiff to stretch 
another inch. But he kept on burrowing 
deeper and deeper till he had finished a 
safe and cosy little room far down in the 
ground where the soil around would not 
freeze, even in the coldest weather. 

When he was ready to begin his long 
winter sleep, he dragged some dead leaves 



THE EARTHWORM 45 

into his new burrow and plugged up the 
opening so that the frosty air could not 
creep inside. Then he crawled down to the 
very bottom and curled up in a soft little 
brown bunch to sleep till the spring sun- 
shine melted the frozen earth above him, 
and the warm sweet showers came trickling 
through the soil which he had helped to 
make. 



Ill 

MISCHIEVOUS MADAM MOS- 
QUITO 



Ill 

MISCHIEVOUS MADAM MOS- 
QUITO 

I. WHERE THE LITTLE WIGGLERS LIVED 

ONE spring morning, long before the 
sun rose, a little mother mosquito 
went flitting over the garden. She 
was looking for water in which to lay her 
eggs so that there would be some baby 
mosquitoes by and by. She hunted along 
the path, and around the bushes, and in 
the corners of the hedge; but she could 
not find even a broken bottle or empty tin 
can that might have held some drops from 
the last shower. 

Then she flew to the house at one end 
of the garden and crawled over the rain- 
water barrel in search of a crack in the 
cover. When she was sure that she could 



50 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

not possibly squeeze inside to lay her eggs, 
she went to the hydrant on the lawn to see 
if the hose had been leaking in a puddle 
underneath. But she could not find a 
single muddy spot. So she spread her 
filmy wings again and flitted away over the 
hedge and across the street and around a 
barn to a pond in a vacant lot beyond. 

The pond had begun to dry up at one 
end. The ground near it was wet and 
spongy, with long yellow grasses bending 
over little pools here and there. These 
pools were exactly what the mother mos- 
quito wanted, because there were no fish in 
them to eat her babies. Perhaps she knew 
that the fish in the pond could not flap 
across the grassy spots to reach the puddles 
scattered over the marshy place. 

Anyway, she flew to one of the patches 
of quiet water and dropped her eggs upon 
it. She laid as many as three hundred or 
more. They were all stuck together in a 
tiny raft which floated out on the surface 
of the pool. The sun came up and shone on 



MADAM MOSQUITO 51 

the ripples. A bird swung on a reed and 
fluttered down to drink. She dipped in her 
bill, splash! so near the wee brown raft 
that it was almost sucked inside. Away 
it went, dipping and tossing in the fairy 
wavelets, when suddenly, kerplunk, a big 
green frog hopped right on top of it. But 
the tiny raft was light as cork, and instead 
of sinking beneath him as he swam down 
to the bottom, it bobbed up to the top of 
the water again, and danced wildly hither 
and thither in the whirling billows caused 
by his plunge. 

All the sweet spring morning the raft 
floated in the sunshine, and early in the 
afternoon the baby mosquitoes hatched 
out. 

Now you would have been surprised! 
The babies that came squirming out of 
those eggs did not look a bit like their 
mother. They were nothing but soft dark 
little wigglers. The first tiny creature that 
wiggled out of the largest egg dived from 
under the raft and swam up to the surface 



52 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

of the pool to breathe. Instead of poking 
her head up to the air, she hung upside 
down, with one point of her forked tail 
pushed up to the top. She breathed 
through a tube which was in her tail in- 
stead of in her head. 

As soon as she was full of fresh air, she 
began to flap the other point of her tail. 
Away she swam, bending and twisting and 
squirming, this way and that, as fast as 
she could wiggle. While she was darting 
and doubling, she kept waving the hairs 
near her mouth to and fro. This quick 
steady motion drove the water toward her 
mouth. In the water were the very tiniest 
bits of food for her. When they floated 
into her soft open mouth, she swallowed 
them and waited for more to be pushed 
along by the busy little hairs. 

After swimming and eating for about a 
minute, she flapped up to the top again 
to take another breath. Then she hurried 
down to eat. Going up was hard work 
because she was heavier than the water. 



MADAM MOSQUITO 53 

She had to jerk her tiny body very fast 
and wiggle her tail and flap all her little 
swimming-hairs at once. She had six 
swimming-hairs on her tail and others on 
the rest of her body. She rowed with hairs 
as you swim by kicking your legs and 
throwing out your arms. 

As soon as she reached the top of the 
pool and poked her breathing-tube into the 
air, she Telt lighter, because the new fresh 
air in her helped her to float. So she could 
hang there upside down without any trou- 
ble. When she was ready to go swimming 
around below again, she wiggled away 
downward as easily as a real fish. 

Now one day a very dreadful thing almost 
happened. When she came hurrying up to 
breathe, after being a whole minute down 
at the bottom, she could not poke the end 
of her breathing-tube through the top of 
the water. Though she pushed with all her 
might, and flapped and twisted and jerked, 
she could not reach the air above. It 
seemed as if there was a layer of thin rub- 



54 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

ber over the surface of the pool. Finally 
she gave a last wild squirm, and managed 
to slip out from beneath that dangerous 
spot. Her tail stretched up to the air in 
a twinkling. She hung there, breathing 
and breathing and breathing, deep down 
and all the way through her soft body. 
She had almost drowned that time. 

What caused all this trouble for her had 
been a drop of oil that had floated from 
over a dead frog at the edge of the pool. 
The oil made a tough film on the water, 
just where she tried to push through at 
first. If she had not wiggled away from 
under it and found a clear space, she would 
surely have drowned. Sometimes, when 
people wish to get rid of mosquitoes, they 
pour kerosene oil on the ponds and pud- 
dles near their houses. Then all the wig- 
glers drown because they cannot poke their 
tails up to the air to breathe. 

Not long after this narrow escape, the 
young mosquito had an adventure that was 
really a joke, though very likely she did 



MADAM MOSQUITO 55 

not find it funny. She was wiggling hither 
and thither while she swallowed her dinner. 
A hundred or more of her brothers and 
sisters were twisting and dancing and 
squirming around her in the pool. Sud- 
denly, with a swish and a rush, a terrible 
monster of a tadpole dashed among them. 
His tail went flap, flap, flap, as he darted 
this way and that, with his round horny 
mouth opened hungrily. 

Now how were those frightened little 
wigglers to know that tadpoles are vege- 
tarians and eat bits of plants instead of 
gobbling up lively mosquito babies by the 
dozen? They were doubtless quite as much 
scared as if he had been a great greedy 
fish instead of a harmless tadpole. They 
skipped in every direction to escape from 
the tossing and twirling of the ripples 
which surged about his thrashing tail. A 
tadpole, or pollywog, as it is called, may 
not seem very large to you. But you just 
try being a tiny wiggler once, and you will 
see. Perhaps you would feel like making 



56 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

up a fairy tale about a horrid big fat ogre 
called Pollywog-the-Wiggler-Killer. 

In spite of such perils, the mosquito baby 
grew fat as she ate more and more. When 
she was too big for her old skin, she wig- 
gled out of it, and wore a new one a size 
larger. The third time she changed her 
skin, she looked so different that she would 
hardly have recognized herself with her 
own eyes, if she had happened to have 
any. 

The head end of her body had swollen 
out big and round. She breathed through 
two little horns at the back of her neck, 
instead of through one of the points of her 
tail. She felt so light that she stayed at 
the top of the water most of the time, with 
her horns poking through to the air above. 
She did not care about eating now. She 
was happy enough just to float there, 
breathing and resting at the surface of the 
pool. 

It was not a very safe place for her, 
because there were dragon-flies living near 



MADAM MOSQUITO 57 

that pond. More than one of them caught 
a glimpse of the two tiny horns sticking 
through the* water, and came swooping 
down to catch the little fat morsel below. 
It was the queerest thing how that soft, 
dark, wee body, without eyes or ears, knew 
when the dragon-fly was coming. It may 
be that she could feel the shadow of the 
gauzy wings flitting above the water. At 
any rate, she always vanished like a flash 
before the hungry dragon-fly could snap 
her up. Away to the bottom she flapped, 
bending and twisting her slender body. 
She found now that swimming down was 
harder work than floating up, because her 
head end was so light and full of air. 

Dragon-flies were not her only enemies 
during the two or three days that she 
swung there in the water. Once a frog 
jumped at her, and another time, as she 
hung breathing at the surface, a bird spied 
her and darted at her just a moment too 
late. She had paddled downward like a 
flash. That was exciting enough, you may 



58 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

be sure. But the worst danger of all her 
babyhood was yet to happen. 

Somehow or other there chanced to be 
a few fish eggs in that pool. Maybe they 
had been laid there before the pond had 
dried away, leaving the marsh with its sep- 
arate pools here and there amid the long 
grasses. Well, anyhow, one morning some 
minnows hatched out of those eggs, and 
began at once to chase the little wigglers. 

It was, of course, sad for the wigglers, 
though possibly not so bad for the min- 
nows or for the people who might have 
been bitten by the mosquitoes if the wig- 
glers had escaped. But those energetic 
young minnows ate every wiggler in that 
pool except our wee creature who was the 
oldest of them all. She squirmed away 
while the minnows were busy catching the 
others. She wiggled close to the bank 
where there was not enough water for them 
to swim after her. There she stayed till 
night brought sleep to the young minnows 
who had been joyously darting to and fro 



MADAM MOSQUITO 59 

all day long in that pool, once the home 
of three hundred merry little wigglers. 

There at the edge of the water floated 
the mosquito baby in the darkness. She 
did not worry about the next morning when 
the hungry minnows would surely wake 
and swim around hunting for breakfast. 
Maybe the smallest one might flap along 
on his side through the shallow water to 
catch the little wiggler. But an animal 
like this young insect cannot think, and 
therefore she never worries. She only 
cares about the way she feels at the mo- 
ment. And all that night she felt quite 
comfortable except that her skin seemed to 
be getting tighter and tighter. 

II. WHAT MADAM MOSQUITO DID IN THE 
GARDEN 

In the morning — now perhaps you have 
been expecting this — her skin split, and 
out of the crack crawled a grown up mos- 
quito with a small head, a long slender 
body, and two gauzy wings. These wings 



60 



WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 



were not much use to her just at first, be- 
cause they were damp and limp and creased 
from having been folded up inside the wig- 
gler skin for so many hours when they 
were growing. While they were drying, 




she sat on her old skin that was floating 
there empty. 

Presently she fluttered to a blade of grass 
and walked along it with all her six jointed 
legs. It may have felt odd to have legs 
for walking, instead of hairs that were only 
useful for paddling in the water. And 



MADAM MOSQUITO 61 

then, besides all those legs, she had two 
wings to carry her far away from the dan- 
gerous pool! Wasn't that fortunate for 
her? You see, it had not been really neces- 
sary to worry about those minnows after 
all. 

However, she was soon to learn that the 
air also was full of perils. She was just 
lifting her wings to fly up from the grass, 
when a dragon-fly darted toward her. It 
may have been the same one which had 
almost caught her when she was a baby 
in the pool. She had hardly time to slip 
to one side and crawl under the grass, but 
the dragon-fly did not stop to hunt for 
her, because he liked better to chase insects 
flying in the air. 

Several times that day the young mos- 
quito started to fly up from her hiding 
place, only to slip hastily back to safety. 
Many dragon-flies lived near that marsh, 
for their babies as well as the mosquito wig- 
glers hatch out in the water. The neigh- 
borhood was certainly a bad one for a mos- 



62 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

quito. Little Madam Mosquito must have 
felt this fact to be true, for she wisely flew 
away as soon as the terrible- jawed, four- 
winged, big-eyed dragon-flies had gone to 
sleep at nightfall. 

Off she flitted across the pond in the 
dusk. It seemed a long journey to her, 
for her wings were not very strong. The 
light evening breeze that blew over the 
water tossed her hither and thither as it 
carried her onward. She was glad enough 
to reach the shore and flutter to the ground, 
where she clung to a weed till she felt 
rested. 

Then she started out again and flew 
humming toward the garden. This hum- 
ming song was caused by the air beating 
against a certain part of her breathing 
tubes, as she hovered with wings outspread. 
Another mosquito heard her song, and 
came flying among the trees to find her. 
He could tell in what direction to go by 
the way the sound stirred his feathery feel- 
ers, or antennae, as they are called. When 



MADAM MOSQUITO 63 

he first heard her, the humming note ruf- 
fled the hairs on the outside of the left one. 
He turned his head till he could feel both 
his antennae ruffling just alike. By that 
he knew that she was straight in front of 
him. So he flew on till he found her. 
Then they flitted together through the gar- 
den in the sweet spring twilight to a blos- 
soming cherry tree. 

The young brother mosquito did not care 
much about eating, for he could not bite 
through anything. The sister mosquito was 
different. She had at her mouth a long 
sharp beak no thicker than a hair. She 
could push it through tender skin as if it 
were a needle, and suck up the juices inside. 
This evening she pricked into the center of 
the cherry blossoms and drank the nectar 
there. Then she flew to the vegetable beds 
and settled on one plant after another to 
taste the sap. 

By and by, as she flitted here and there, 
she happened to go near the house at the 
end of the garden. In a hammock under 



64 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

a maple beside the front piazza two chil- 
dren were swinging. The mosquito wanted 
to alight just then and rest her wings. So 
she settled down on one of their hands. It 
was natural for her, when she felt the soft 
skin under her feet, to press her mouth 
close, stab her beak in, and suck, as she had 
been sucking the juices of the plants and 
flowers. 

The fresh warm blood flowed up into her 
mouth. Ah, but this was the best thing she 
had ever tasted! She sucked and sucked 
and sucked till suddenly, slap! A small 
hand had almost smashed her into a flat 
red stain. The wind that it made as it 
struck toward her had startled her barely 
in time. She pulled out her beak and 
dodged in a hurry. 

But instead of flying far away from that 
dangerous place, she kept hovering near. 
Every chance she could get, she alighted 
on a hand or an arm or a forehead, and 
tried to get another delicious mouthful. 
She even bit through the little boy's stock- 







I 



■SfP 



i I 



%C" 












IN A HAMMOCK UNDER A MAPLE TWO CHILDREN WERE SWINGING." 

[Page 64 



MADAM MOSQUITO 67 

ing, and pricked the little girl on her shoul- 
der under her dress. They kept slapping 
at her till their mother called them in to 
go to bed. 

That young mosquito, now that she had 
tasted blood, never ate anything else. She 
did not care for sap or nectar any more. 
If she had stayed in the marsh, or gone to 
live in a wood where there were no people, 
she would have eaten only the juice of 
plants, with now and then a bite perhaps 
of some dead animal. Millions of mos- 
quitoes never have a chance to suck warm 
blood as this little one did. 

Sad to say, the more blood she drank, 
the greedier she grew. Every evening she 
flitted out from her daylight shelter under 
a bush and hovered teasingly about the 
children in the hammock, or hummed 
around their parents on the piazza. She 
became so bold that she no longer dodged 
the very first instant she felt a hand slap- 
ping toward her. She kept waiting just a 
moment more, and then another moment, 



68 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

and another, before she pulled out her beak 
and flew quickly to one side. 

At last there came a sad evening when 
she waited one moment too long. Slap, 
crack, and Mischievous Madam Mosquito 
was dead! 



IV 

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE IN 
THE GARDEN 



IV 

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE IN 
THE GARDEN 

I. THE CATERPILLAR BABY AT HOME 

NEAR a gooseberry bush in one cor- 
ner of the garden a milkweed plant 
was growing. On one of the sil- 
very green leaves was a white dot of an 
egg which a big red butterfly had laid there 
four or five days earlier. Now something 
alive was beginning to move inside the tiny 
egg. Wee baby jaws were cutting out a 
hole in one end, about as big as the point 
of a pin. Up pushed the bit of shell like 
a lid, and out peered the queer crumpled 
little face of a baby caterpillar. 

He was hardly big enough to notice, 
and he certainly did not look as if he would 
ever grow to be a butterfly with four beau- 



72 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

tiful wings. He seemed to be nothing but 
a little striped worm on a weed. The first 
thing he did was to turn around, after he 
had squirmed out of the egg 9 and eat up 
the shell. This took some time, because his 
mouth was so very small. Though the egg 
itself was tiny, it was, of course, far larger 
than his speck of a mouth with its wee lips 
and jaws. 

The caterpillar did not eat the shell be- 
cause he liked the taste of it. He did not 
even know why he ate it, but I can tell 
you. If he left the empty shell on the 
leaf, some hungry bird, or fly, or spider 
might notice it. Then they would know 
that a baby caterpillar was somewhere 
near, and they would hunt among the 
leaves till they found him. So, naturally, 
it was safer for him to get rid of it as 
soon as he possibly could. He did it be- 
cause his father and mother had done it 
when they hatched out of their eggs. His 
grandfather and his grandmother had done 
the same; and his great-grandfather and 



THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE 73 

his great-grandmother, and so on back for 
years and years and years. That was one 
reason why they had lived to grow up and 
have children of their own, instead of being 
eaten up themselves while they were babies. 
This habit of eating the empty eggshell is 
so strong with caterpillars that they all do 
it the very first thing without understand- 
ing the reason why. Such an inherited 
habit is called an instinct. 

After our little striped caterpillar had 
swallowed the last bit of shell, he rested a 
moment, lying very still on the leaf. Per- 
haps his mouth was tired. Eating is rather 
hard work when the thing one is eating 
does not taste very good. But in a few 
moments he felt hungry for real food. 
Now do you think that he had to hunt 
around and go squirming this way and 
that to find it? No, indeed! The mother 
butterfly had laid the egg on the very plant 
which her baby would like best to eat. 
There he was lying right on top of his din- 
ner. All that he needed to do was to push 



74 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

out his lip against the leaf under him, suck 
back a bit of it into his mouth and cut it 
with his strong jaws. It was tender and 
juicy, and it tasted so delicious to him that 
he ate and ate and ate till he had eaten a 
hole through the tip of the leaf. 

By that time he was ready to rest again. 
Of course, if he had wanted to, he could 
have taken a little nap right there where 
he had been eating. But somehow he knew 
that it was safer for him to crawl to the 
under side of the leaf, and lie hidden in 
the shadow. Then a hungry bird, or a 
spider out hunting for his dinner, could 
not find him so easily as if he had gone 
to sleep in plain sight on top of the 
leaf. 

He did not rest very long, because he 
was in a hurry to eat again. In fact a 
caterpillar's chief business in life is to eat 
and grow. All day and part of the night 
he kept on doing the same thing. Now he 
crawled to the tip of the leaf and gnawed 
away till he was tired. Then he squirmed 



THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE 75 

back to the under side and rested till he 
was hungry again. 

When he moved, he did not drag his 
body on by stretching out his head and 
drawing up his tail, as an earthworm does. 
Though he looked like a worm, he really 
was not a worm. He was a baby insect, 
and he had six true legs, as all insects have. 
These six true legs were under his body 
next to his head. They had horny claws 
and were jointed so that he could use them 
in walking. 

Besides these legs, he had ten others far- 
ther back toward the tail end of his body. 
These ten prop-legs, as they are called, 
were short and stubby. They helped to 
prop his body up above the leaf. They 
paddled along behind when his six front 
legs started out walking. 

The ten prop-legs helped him in another 
way too. On the tip of each one were tiny 
hooks that hooked around the little hairs on 
the stem of the milkweed, and kept him 
from falling off. At first he was so careful 



76 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

in stepping from one spot to another that 
he spun a silken thread ahead of him as 
he walked. On his lower lip was a horny 
tube. Out of the tube came a thread like 
that of a spider's web. Wherever he 
moved, he kept swinging his head from 
side to side and fastening the thread over 
the leaf like a zigzag ladder. That made a 
safe path for him, because he could hook 
his hind legs fast at every step. 

If it had not been for his spinning 
thread, he might have had a bad accident 
one morning. He was hurrying over the 
edge of the leaf on the way from his nap 
to his dinner. Just as he was half across, 
with the last part of his body swinging 
loose in the air as he scrambled from one 
side to the other, there came a thump and 
a bounce. A bird had alighted suddenly 
on the stem of the milkweed, and made it 
teeter up and down. The little caterpillar 
hung on as tightly as he could, digging the 
claws of his six forefeet into the edge of 
the leaf, but the plant gave such a jerk 



THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE 77 

upward when the bird flew away that he 
lost his hold. Down he fell; down, down, 
down, — for as much as an inch. 

All at once he stopped falling and hung 
there in the air. The thread of silk from 
the tube on his lower lip kept him from 
dropping to the ground. One end of it 
was still fastened to the zigzag ladder 
which he had been spinning as he crawled 
over the leaf. So there he swung at the 
other end of it, with his tiny, striped body 
squirming and twisting. But he soon 
found that he was safe and in a moment 
he climbed up the thread and went to eat- 
ing again. 

II. LOST IN THE WILDERNESS 

After he had been eating for about two 
days, he began to feel as if his skin was get- 
ting too tight for him. Of course, the 
more he ate, the fatter he grew, but his skin 
remained the same size it was at first. 
Naturally he felt crowded inside. Now 



78 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

perhaps you can guess what happened 
next. 

He walked to and fro over the leaf, mov- 
ing his head from right to left as he spun 
a little carpet out of his silken thread. 
When the carpet was quite thick, he lay 
down on it and tangled the hooks of his 
ten prop-legs in it. He lay very still and 
waited till his skin cracked and slipped 
back over his body to his hind legs, then 
he walked out of it, and after resting a 
while he turned around and ate up his old 
skin. 

There he was in a new bright skin. He 
was big enough now to be easily seen. He 
was about as long as a grain of rice. He 
was very pretty, with his striped body and 
his little yellow face marked with two black 
arches. Behind his head he had two slender 
black horns which kept twitching back- 
ward and forward as he walked. He was 
not so careful now to spin a thread in front 
of him as he moved. This was the reason 
why he had a dangerous adventure one day. 



THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE 79 

It happened one afternoon that he was 
hurrying to crawl under a leaf before a 
thunder-storm could catch him and wet 
him. The drops began to patter down just 
as he was wriggling along the stem of the 
milkweed as fast as he could wriggle. He 
was in such haste that he did not take time 
to hook fast to the hairs on the plant at 
every step. So, when three big drops of 
rain came trickling down behind him and 
rushed against him with a swish and a 
splash, he lost his balance and slid off to 
the ground. 

If he had been spinning out a thread as 
he moved, he would have been able to climb 
up it to the plant again. But now he was 
lost in the grass below, for he did not know 
how to find his way back. Though he had 
a curved row of tiny eyes on each side of 
his head, he could not see well at all. He 
knew when it was light, and he knew when 
it was dark, but probably he could not see 
things any better than you could if you had 
a cloth over your eyes. 



80 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

The poor little caterpillar lay still for a 
moment after he had dropped with a bump. 
Then he uncurled and began to crawl away 
as fast as he could scramble. When he 
moved, first the horn, or feeler, on one side 
twitched forward, then the horn on the 
other side. If a feeler touched a pebble 
or brushed against a leaf, he knew that he 
must turn out and wriggle away in a dif- 
ferent direction. It was just as if you 
were running in the dark, with your hands 
stretched out in front to feel your way. 

On scrambled the lost baby caterpillar 
through the forest of grass. His slender 
horns twitched backward and forward. The 
skin on his back wrinkled up in tiny folds 
over his jointed body and then un wrinkled, 
as his front legs trotted along too fast for 
the stubby hind legs to follow without drag- 
ging. Being lost was very confusing. He 
hurried in one direction blindly till the tip 
of a horn brushed against a root, then he 
turned and crawled swiftly in another di- 
rection till he felt the steep hard wall of a 



THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE 81 

pebble in his path. After wriggling around 
it, he set out straight ahead again in a 
greater hurry than before. He did not 
know what was the matter, or where he 
was. He only knew that he was lost in a 
strange dreadful place, far away from the 
soft hairy stem and tender leaves of his 
milkweed home. 

Before he had scurried forward three 
inches, he almost bumped into a dead stick. 
He dodged to one side in such wild haste 
that he could not stop himself in time when 
he felt his front pair of feet clutching at 
the empty air. He was right on the edge 
of a hole which had been dug by a squirrel. 
Down he tumbled, rolling over and over 
till he reached the bottom. 

The fall did not hurt him, because he had 
no bones to break. But what do you sup- 
pose? A big gray spider lived in that hole. 
She was hanging in her web in one corner. 
When she felt the threads jerk and tear 
as the caterpillar fell through, she ran out 
to discover what was the matter. But he 



82 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

lay so still, curled up in a round little ball, 
that she could not see him, for he was as 
much as four inches away from her. If 
he had moved, perhaps she would have no- 
ticed him, because spiders, and many in- 
sects and birds, too, can see moving things 
more easily than things that are not mov- 
ing. It was lucky for the caterpillar that 
he did not begin to wriggle out straight till 
after the spider had turned and crept back 
to the middle of her web again. 

However he never learned what a ter- 
rible danger he had escaped. As he could 
not see her or hear her, he did not even 
know she was near. It just happened that 
she was not looking when he uncurled and 
started scrambling up the side of the hole. 
After reaching the top, he kept on in the 
direction his head was pointed. He hur- 
ried along till his horns touched a plant. 
Instead of squirming away from it, some- 
how he wanted to crawl up the stem. And 
so he did. The moment he felt the soft 
hairy covering under his feet, he flapped 



THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE 83 

out his lip and took a big bite of a tender 
leaf. He knew that he had found a milk- 
weed home at last. 

III. THE CATERPILLAR BABY GOES TO SLEEP 
IN HIS CRADLE 

He must have been the happiest little 
caterpillar in all the garden that day. The 
first thing he did was to rest a while, for 
he was tired from his wanderings. Then 
he crept out on a juicy leaf and ate and 
ate and ate. He had never been so hungry 
before in all his life. 

Day after day he ate and rested. Some- 
times he ate at night, too, although he 
moved more slowly and slept longer when 
the air was cool on his skin. Four times 
he changed his skin, and appeared in a 
bright new suit. When he had grown to 
be almost two inches long, a wonderful 
thing happened to him. He went to sleep 
a striped green and yellow caterpillar, and 
woke up a red butterfly, the most beauti- 
ful little creature in the garden. 



84 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

This is the way it happened. After 
coming out in his last new skin, he ate 
greedily for two or three days. Then he 



did not seem to care for more food. He 
crawled over the leaves without stopping 
to eat. He roamed up and down the stem 
till finally he felt so queer and restless that 
he crept to the ground and went hurrying 



THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE 85 

off through the grass. He walked on and 
on till he reached a stone. Up he crawled, 
and over the top, and down the other side. 
He did not stop, however, because he had 
not yet found what he was seeking. He 
was seeking a safe, sheltered spot where he 
could prepare for his long nap. 

Beyond the stone he came to a tree. Up 
he climbed, wriggling across the rough 
places on the bark, squirming through the 
cracks and hollows. When he felt a branch 
stretching above him, he walked out along 
its under side and began to spin a carpet of 
his silken thread. This carpet was like the 
little mats he always spun whenever he was 
getting ready to crawl out of an old skin. 
The only difference was that he made one 
spot in it very thick. After he had finished 
it, he crept out upon it and hooked his last 
pair of legs into the thick spot. Then he 
let go with all the rest of his legs and 
swung head downward, almost as a boy 
hangs by his toes to a trapeze. 

All day and all night he swung there on 



86 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

the under side of the limb. Instead of 
hanging down straight, he curved his head 
up toward his tail. That made his skin 
stretch so tight over his rounded back that 
soon it split and began to shrivel away. 
When it had shrunken to a dry little bundle 
clinging around his last pair of legs, he 
jerked out the tail end of his body by twist- 
ing and whirling. Then he caught hold 
of the thick part of the carpet with the 
hook on his tail. The old skin with its two 
horns and ten prop-legs dropped off, and 
left him hanging there, all wrapped up in 
a soft green chrysalis. 

Through the pale covering of the chrys- 
alis the new butterfly could be seen with 
its wings folded around its jointed body. 
It was not ready yet to awaken and fly 
away. It must sleep till its wings, and 
eyes, and legs, and tongue, and feelers 
could grow strong enough to be of use. 
So it hung there under the branch for more 
than a week. 

The early sunbeams stole in level rays 



THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE 87 

across the garden and shone on the green 
and gold cradle of the sleeping butterfly. 
Once Grasshopper Green went whirring by 
on his way to find a fresh tender leaf. 
Sometimes a spider scampered past on its 
eight long legs, or a woodpecker paused in 
her hunt for insects under the bark to nip 
at the chrysalis. She could not peck a hole 
through, because the covering of the pretty 
case had hardened and thickened to pro- 
tect the delicate young creature inside. 
Once in a while a puff of wind set the 
cradle swinging gently; but there was no 
motion within, except a feeble wriggle now 
and then. 

IV. BUTTERFLY RED WINGS WAKES UP 

At last came a beautiful morning after 
a night of warm drizzling rain. The damp- 
ness softened the shell of the chrysalis. 
When the sun burst through the gray 
clouds, it set all the wet leaves twinkling. 
Gleaming drops of water trickled around 
the limb and dripped softly upon the green 



88 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

cradle. Was it moving? Did something 
stir within? Yes, surely it had quivered, 
and begun to swing lightly to and fro, 
though there was no breeze to bend even 
the grasses. 

Click! The shell cracked, and opened 
slowly like a fairy door. The butterfly 
had awakened. He bent this way and 
that, struggling to escape from the chrys- 
alis case. He drew his head from beneath 
the covering. He pulled out his six legs 
and, setting them upon the outside of the 
case, he crawled up to the limb above. 
There he hung, damp and weak, his wings 
drooping downward, his large eyes shining 
like jewels in the sunlight. He was a real 
butterfly now, in a garden world of leaves, 
and light, and flowers. He would never 
again be a greedy little caterpillar who 
cared for nothing else except eating all the 
time. 

While he clung to the limb, his four 
wings grew slowly larger and stronger, 
as blood flowed into them from his body. 



THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE 89 

He waved them gently to and fro. The 
air hardened the tiny shining scales that 
covered his wings like satin. This partic- 
ular butterfly had wings of deep orange 
red, veined with black, and dotted on the 
edge with white. Such butterflies are com- 
mon everywhere in America, and are called 
by the name of " monarch/' perhaps be- 
cause they are such splendid, big beau- 
tiful creatures. 

Though this young butterfly had great, 
gleaming eyes, he could not see his own 
body, and so very likely he did not care 
what color he happened to be. Just at 
first he was more interested in his tongue 
than in his wings. It was a queer tongue, 
made of two long hollow pieces. He had 
some trouble in fitting these halves face 
to face to form a tube. He kept trying 
again and again, laying them together and 
then drawing them apart till he succeeded 
in hooking them right. Then he coiled the 
tongue, like a watch spring, up to his 
mouth. 



90 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

His mouth now was not in the least like 
the mouth he had while he was a cater- 
pillar. Instead of a tiny flapping lip and 
horny jaws for nibbling, he had only this 
slender tongue between two short feathery 
horns. Never again in all his life could 
he take a bite of tender, juicy green leaf. 
He could not eat anything except what 
might be sucked up through the tube of 
this long tongue. 

At last he was ready to fly. He lifted 
his wings slowly upward till they were 
folded close together over his back. Then 
he unclasped his feet from the bark of the 
limb, and spread his beautiful wings. 
Away he sailed through the air. On in 
the sunlight he fluttered like a living 
flower. He was searching for a real flower 
from which he might suck up the sweet 
juice of honey. He had eaten nothing 
since the day he had fallen asleep in his 
green and gold cradle. 



THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE 91 
V. LIFE AMID THE FLOWERS 

Over the garden he flew, past the very 
milkweed where he had lived when he was 
a baby caterpillar. He did not notice the 
pale green and white blossom that swayed 
on the tip of the slender stem. Though 
his eyes were large and bright, he could 
not see things very distinctly. Only the 
gayly colored flowers attracted his atten- 
tion. 

Beyond the milkweed some poppies 
were growing in the grass around the cur- 
rant bushes. The butterfly caught a 
glimpse of spots of glowing yellow, and 
fluttered toward them. He hovered near, 
now drifting with the breeze, now soaring 
with wings outspread, till he was close 
enough to smell the flowers. He could 
smell with the two long thread-like an- 
tennae, or feelers, above his eyes. 

Slowly he fluttered down upon one of 
the yellow poppies, and uncoiled his long 
tongue. Here and there, into the golden 



92 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

heart of the flower, he thrust it again and 
again till he had found the honey. Then 
he folded his wings above his back and 
stayed motionless on the petals while he 
sucked up the sweet juice. When he had 
taken all the honey in that flower, he flitted 
on to another and another. Oh! it was 
delightful to be a butterfly in a fragrant 
garden. 

Long before evening he crept under a 
leaf on a bush, and slept till the morning 
light grew bright and warm, then he was 
off again to hunt for fresh flowers or rest 
lazily on the leaves in the sunshine. One 
day while he clung to the tip of a twig, 
half opening and closing his wings drow- 
sily, he felt a sudden rough dash of wind 
blow his antennas backward. He had 
barely time to fly quickly to one side, just 
as a straw hat came swooping down over 
the spot where he had been resting. The 
rim of the hat snapped against the tip of 
one wing and tore a nick in its velvety 
edge. 



THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE 93 

The boy who had tried to catch him ran 
laughing along the road, while the injured 
butterfly fluttered away over a field. If 
the hat had broken his beautiful wing, he 
would never again have been able to fly, 
but would have crawled hither and thither, 
dragging it drooping and crushed by his 
side, till he died of hunger. For how could 
he have found enough honey to keep him 
alive, if he had lost the wings that carried 
him from flower to flower? 

The butterfly did not know what had 
hurt him. He soon forgot all about the 
past danger, as he drifted onward to a 
hillside sweet with blossoming clover. 
There were other butterflies there, some 
white, some yellow, some blue, some pur- 
ple. Bees who lived in the garden were 
gathering honey to take back to their hives. 
They worked hard all day long, making 
honey and wax, caring for the baby bees 
at home and doing a dozen other things. 
You shall hear of them when you read 
the story about bees. But the idle butter- 



94 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

flies did no work from morning to night 
except seek nectar among the flowers. 
Nectar is a kind of watery honey. 

It must have been pleasant to be a but- 
terfly in summer, especially to be a big 
red monarch with strong wings spread to 
the breeze. When this one of ours went 
soaring high among the tree tops, he was 
not afraid of being caught by a bird. His 
parents had never been afraid either; and 
somehow, without thinking about it, he 
knew that birds did not like the taste of 
any of his family. So, while many of the 
other kinds of butterflies flitted quickly 
here and there, or dodged and hid low 
amid the bushes, he sailed on in plain sight. 
Sometimes he sported alone or played with 
another butterfly, circling around his com- 
panion as they fluttered up, up, up in the 
sunshine. 



VI. AWAY TO THE SOUTH AND BACK AGAIN 



t 



If only it were summer all the year, 
what a lovely time the butterflies would 



THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE 95 

have! But at last the autumn came, as it 
always does ; and the days grew shorter 
and cooler. It was only during the sun- 
niest hours now that Red Wings fluttered 
over the garden like a lovely flower. He 
did not feel like stirring as soon as he 
awoke in the morning, because the cold 
air made him dull and lazy. He did not 
even want to lift his wings, but dozed com- 
fortably till the sun shone warm enough 
to open fresh buds on the marigold bushes. 
Then he came flitting out to hover over 
the blossoms. 

One day he slept so late that the bees 
had time to take all the honey from every 
flower in the garden before he began to 
hunt for any. There were not many flow- 
ers in bloom now, for the clover was gone, 
and an early frost had nipped the nastur- 
tiums. The butterfly was so hungry that 
he flew across the hedge to seek wild asters 
and goldenrod in the fields along the road. 

On he sailed, pausing now and then to 
alight on a plant or to sip a drink from a 



96 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

quiet pool. Once as he was resting, with 
his wings folded above his back, he smelled 
another monarch butterfly somewhere near. 
He waved his antennae to and fro so as 
to smell better. Yes, surely he had not 
been mistaken. Though he could not see 
them yet, he knew that many big red but- 
terflies like himself were gathering among 
the bushes not far away. They were get- 
ting ready to journey southward for the 
winter, as some birds do. The monarchs, 
being the strongest fliers among butter- 
flies, are the only ones that can travel very 
far. 

So he flew joyously onward till he found 
them. There were thousands and thou- 
sands, some resting on the ground, others 
clinging to the leaves and twigs and limbs. 
In a few days they began to fly toward 
the south. For weeks they sailed through 
the air about as fast as a man can walk. 
Of course our butterfly did not know how 
many there were in the great swarm about 
him. He could see, perhaps, moving dim 



THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ONE 97 

spots of bright color here and there, above 
and beneath and behind and ahead of him. 
He could smell many more. When they 
came near enough, he could touch some 
with his antennae. At night he clasped his 
front pair of feet to some twig so close 
to his companions that he had no space 
to spread his wings. In the daytime they 
all soared steadily southward till they 
reached a land where the sun shone warm 
and flowers bloomed all winter long. 

There the swarm separated. Some flew 
this way, and some flew that way. Our 
butterfly stayed in the South till spring. 
When the lilacs began to bloom in the 
beautiful garden where he had lived as a 
baby caterpillar, he came flying toward the 
North again. 

His wings were a little ragged by this 
time, and quite faded, for he was getting 
old and had flown many miles with the 
wind ruffling the delicate scales that clothed 
him. Of course every time he folded his 
wings or beat them together in flying, he 



98 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

wore them out the least little bit. But, 
joyous as ever, here he was again, floating 
over the fields where he used to seek nectar 
from the flowers. 

Three or four young milkweed plants 
had sprung up from seeds where the old 
milkweed had been growing the summer 
before. On the tip leaf of each one was 
a white dot of an egg laid by a mother 
monarch butterfly. On other plants and 
weeds were eggs of caterpillars of other 
kinds of butterflies. Here and there a new 
young butterfly, with wings of pale yellow, 
or white, or blue, came crawling from its 
chrysalis cradle and clung to a leaf while 
it waited to grow strong enough to fly. In 
the garden the lilacs and the lilies and the 
apple-blossoms opened their golden hearts 
to the sunlight and waited for the bees and 
butterflies to come visiting for honey. 



THE UNTIDY FLY 



V 

THE UNTIDY FLY 

I. THE PLACE WHERE HE WAS HATCHED 

NOW it happened that some distance 
down the street from the house 
with the garden was another house 
where an untidy family lived. This other 
house had a garden also; but the flower- 
beds were crowded with straggling weeds. 
In the back yard so many ashes had been 
scattered carelessly over the ground that 
not a single earthworm burrowed there to 
help make the soil rich and light. The 
cover to the cistern was so loose that dozens 
of mother mosquitoes had laid their eggs 
in the water. Worst of all, a heap of dirty 
straw beside the barn door lay steaming in 
the August sunshine. 

Above this rubbish from the stalls hun- 



102 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

dreds of flies were buzzing lazily. Now 
and then one of them alighted on the heap, 
and crept down into a crack. In a mo- 
ment she crawled out again and went to 
buzzing as before. But she had left some- 
thing tucked away beneath a clod or a 
straw. What do you think it was? It 
was a bunch of tiny white eggs that would 
hatch into baby flies the next day. 

Perhaps you would have been surprised 
if you had seen what kind of a baby came 
wriggling out of one of the eggs the next 
morning. He looked like a fat little white 
worm with a speck of a mouth at his head 
end. Of course the first thing he wanted 
was something to eat. Luckily for him, 
his mother had laid her eggs right in the 
very food that her babies would find best 
for them. If they hatched out on sand or 
clean fresh-smelling earth they would have 
starved to death, or else dried up and died, 
as they squirmed this way and that in seek- 
ing a place soft and moist and slimy with 
rotting things. 



THE UNTIDY FLY 103 

This manure heap was exactly what they 
needed. The mother had been a wise little 
fly to choose so well with her dot of a 
brain. She had laid more than a hundred 
eggs in a bunch, and as she could not take 
care of so many babies all at once, she put 
them where they could take care of them- 
selves. 

For a whole day the baby fly, or maggot, 
as the name is, squirmed amid his brothers 
and sisters in a corner of the heap, and 
ate the soft wet parts near his mouth. He 
did not eat the hard bits of hay and straw. 
He felt warm and damp and happy. His 
round little body grew too large for his 
skin. So when it cracked open, he wriggled 
out in a new white skin. Then he went 
to eating for another day. Once again 
he changed his skin, and squirmed around 
livelier than ever, as he sucked away at the 
rotten mass. 

After three or four days more, the mag- 
got seemed to lose his appetite. He began 
to feel so queer and drowsy that he 



104 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

dragged himself off under a straw and 
went to sleep. While he slept, he turned 
brown and grew hard outside. He was 
shut up in his own skin as if he were lying 
in a tiny barrel. The greedy little mag- 
got, who could do nothing except wriggle 
and eat, was changing into a big-eyed 
gauzy-winged fly. 

When the young fly began to wake up, 
doubtless he felt queerer even than when 
he fell asleep. How could he know what 
had happened? He could not look at him- 
self, for he was all doubled up in the dark 
case formed by his old skin. His six new 
legs were bent under him, and two limp 
wings pressed close to his sides. Perhaps 
he tried to squirm around as he used to 
do when he was a maggot. Instead of 
a pleasant, simple, little wriggle from 
mouth to tail of a soft tiny body, his two 
wings quivered, his six legs twitched and 
tickled him, and his new head waggled on 
his speck of a slender neck. He had never 
had a real neck before. Now he found a 



THE UNTIDY FLY 105 

neck very convenient, for what do you 
think he had to do? He had to hammer 
a hole in the hard case with his head. 

So up and down he hammered away 
without exactly knowing why till* crack, 
the shell split, and out crawled the young 
fly! Dear me! but it was thrilling to have 
legs. He ran a few steps this way, and 
then turned and ran a few steps that way. 
He crept along a straw, his damp limp 
wings hanging by his sides. The light 
made him feel dizzy; for this was the first 
time he had ever had real eyes. Now that 
he had two big ones and three little ones 
on the top of his head, he must have found 
the world much more interesting than be- 
fore, when he was a blind little maggot. 
Perhaps the world itself seemed to have 
changed after he went to sleep, though in 
fact it was only he himself who was dif- 
ferent. 

Since he found mere legs and eyes so 
exciting, fancy how he felt when at last he 
discovered that he could fly! While he was 



106 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

running nervously to and fro, his wings 
had time to dry and expand to their full 
size. He was a full grown fly now, al- 
though so new. Winged insects, when 
they first come out from the chrysalis, are 
as big as they will ever be. 

This young fly, being still weak from 
his long, cramped sleep without food, wob- 
bled a little as he walked along a slippery 
straw. Somehow he slid off, though he 
certainly should have known better than 
that, for his feet were even stronger for 
clinging to smooth surfaces than the grass- 
hopper's. Well, off he staggered in the 
moist rotting spots where slimy maggots 
were squirming happily. Queer! but now 
that he was changed and grown up, he did 
not enjoy manure much at all. He hated 
to draggle his slender legs and soil the 
edge of his wings, for one reason, perhaps, 
because it was so much trouble to clean 
them. 

He crawled upon another straw as fast 
as he could, and rubbed his front feet to- 



THE UNTIDY FLY 107 

gether to brush off the dirt. Then he lifted 
his last pair of legs and scraped them 
under and over his wings. And then — 
wonder of wonders! Even he himself did 
not understand quite how he did it. A way- 
he was sailing in the sunshine, his gauzy 
wings beating the air so fast that they did 
not seem to move at all. 

II. HIS ADVENTURES IN A KITCHEN 

Now wouldn't you have thought that 
flying was fun enough for a while? But, 
no, of course the first thing that fly wanted 
was something to eat. He seemed to feel 
that the chief use of wings was to carry 
him to find food. So away he buzzed over 
the ash-strewn backyard and tangled flower- 
beds, till he reached the porch of the house 
where the untidy family lived. 

Ah, but something smelled enticing! It 
was a beef -steak being fried on the stove 
in the kitchen. The hungry fly flew 
straight toward the smell, nearer and 
nearer, till bump! he struck the screen 



108 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

door. Naturally, being so new to the 
world, he did not understand that a screen 
door is intended to keep flies outside the 
house. All he knew was that the delicious 
smell came from the other side of this pro- 
voking wall full of holes not nearly big 
enough to let him squeeze through. 

He crawled up and up till he struck the 
top. Then he scrambled buzzing down to 
the ledge and began to crawl up again. 
The browner the steak sizzled, the faster he 
buzzed and the oftener he bumped his head 
and the angrier he became. Finally — oh, 
joy! — he happened to alight upon the 
edge of a torn place in the screen. Im- 
mediately he crept through, as easily as 
anything. On he flitted toward the frying- 
pan over the fire. 

ISTow even the most foolish fly that ever 
lived is not so silly as to take a bite of 
piping hot steak, no matter how delicious 
the smell. This young fly hovered as near 
as he dared while the steak was cooking. 
Sometimes he floated buzzing in the air. 



THE UNTIDY FLY 109 

Sometimes he crawled along the edge of 
the greasy sink and then flew across to the 
table without waiting to clean his feet. On 
a corner of the table was the peeling of 
a decayed banana. The fly crept over it 
and then walked up the side of a sticky 
sugar-bowl and down into the sugar. 
Wherever he stepped, specks of the rotten 
banana and other stale food, that had clung 
to the hairs on his feet, were scattered on 
the sugar. 

This was unpleasant enough, but some- 
thing worse followed. When the mother 
in that untidy family gave the baby a 
spoonful of sugar, she could not see the 
tiny specks of rotten banana on it. But 
they made the baby feel sick and fretful 
all the next day. The mischievous fly, 
however, knew nothing of this. Of course 
he had not meant to cause anybody to have 
colic. The trouble with him was that he 
was too lazy to clean his feet properly 
after walking through sticky refuse. It 
was not so much his fault as the fault of 



110 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

the family who let their kitchen go dirty 
and their screens remain unmended. Some- 
times flies carry the germs of typhoid 
fever from one place to another. 

As for the fly's supper that evening he 
ate so much sugar that he lost his appetite 
for the steak. He had no jaws with which 
to bite his food. His upper lip grew in 
the form of a tube, with two tiny flat files 
at the end. When he wanted to eat, he 
unfolded his long tongue, scraped off a 
bit of sugar with his files, and sucked it 
up to his mouth. 

That night he slept on the frame of a 
picture in the dining-room. When he 
smelled breakfast cooking in the morning, 
he flew toward it, leaving a black speck 
where he had been resting. But then there 
were so many fly specks already on the 
frames and windows that one more or less 
did not make much difference. 

On his way to the kitchen he passed near 
the dining-table. Five or six other flies 
were buzzing around the syrup jug. He 



THE UNTIDY FLY 111 

circled nearer and nearer till he settled 
down on the sticky rim of the jug. He 
unfolded his tongue and took a sip. That 
was even better than sugar, because it was 
easier to suck. After he had eaten all he 
wanted, he lifted his wings to fly. But 
they just flapped up and down without 
raising him in the air. All six of his feet 
were stuck tight in the molasses. 

That was a terrible plight. First he 
stood on five legs, and tried to pull the 
other free. Then he leaned on four and 
struggled to kick with the last two. He 
pulled and kicked and jerked and twisted. 
Once he dragged one foot loose, but he for- 
got to hold it high enough. In a moment 
it was stuck deeper than ever. He sank 
down on his side to rest an instant, and one 
wing was glued fast, then the other. The 
harder he struggled, the stickier he became 
and the less he could move. 

At last he was almost dead of fright and 
weariness, and lay still. When the baby's 
mother started to pour some syrup on a 



112 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

pancake, she saw the fly and fished him 
out on the tip of her fork. She shook him 
off into the air without watching to see 
where he fell. He went tumbling clumsily 
over and over, and dropped splash right 
into the baby's cup of milk. 

This new adventure was not so bad as 
you might at first imagine. Of course he 
was now in danger of drowning. But 
very likely it is pleasanter to drown kick- 
ing in clean cool milk than to smother to 
death motionless in thick molasses. 

The little fly, however, did not intend to 
drown if he could help it. As soon as he 
felt the milk wash over his head, he began 
to struggle again. And this time, happily, 
the more he struggled, the easier it was to 
jerk and twist and flap. You see, the milk 
was washing the molasses from his tired 
legs and draggled wings. 

Finally he was all untangled from the 
stickiness and was free to swim as best he 
could. But alas! by that time he was so 
very weary that he stopped kicking and 



THE UNTIDY FLY 113 

floated quietly. Really he was beginning 
to drown, for he could not breathe, even 
if his head was held above the milk. In- 
sects breathe through tiny holes on each 
side of their bodies. This fly would surely 
have died as he floated, if the baby had 
not poked at him with a small fat fin- 
ger. 

The instant the fly felt something touch 
him, he gave a flap and a kick, and scram- 
bled up slowly over the finger. The baby 
laughed when he felt the crawling feet 
tickle his skin. In a minute he tossed the 
fly off into the air just as he had seen his 
mother do when she fished the insect from 
the molasses. Down dropped the fly to the 
floor, for he could not use his wings while 
they were wet. As soon as he stopped 
feeling dizzy from the whirl and bump, he 
crawled slowly under a chair and rested 
till he was strong enough to clean his legs 
and wings and rub his eyes dry. Then 
away he flitted toward the sunshiny win- 
dow, buzzing as gaily as if he had never 



114 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

known the dangers of milk and the perils 
of molasses. 

III. HIS VISIT TO THE GAEDEN 

His troubles for the day were not yet 
over. The baby's mother lay down after 
luncheon to take a nap. But the flies both- 
ered her so much that she could not get 
to sleep. First one crawled over her fore- 
head, and then another tickled her nose. 
A third alighted on her cheek, and a fourth 
crept across her hand. When the woman 
grew tired and cross from slapping at 
them, she jumped up and snatched two 
towels and began to drive the flies out-of- 
doors. 

Around and around the room she went, 
waving the towels. Some of the flies hid 
behind the pictures, others crept into cracks 
in the plaster, others scurried on before the 
swirling breeze caused by the towels. Our 
young fly was sunning himself quietly on 
the window-ledge when smack! A corner of 
a towel snapped down close beside him and 



THE UNTIDY FLY 115 

almost killed him. Away he tumbled in a 
terrible hurry, banging his wings against 
the pane, bumping his head, and bending 
his feelers. He really was a stupid little 
creature, even if he did have six legs and 
five eyes and two beautiful gauzy wings. 

At last he happened to get started 
toward the open door and was driven along 
by the whirling towels. Out he sailed into 
the sunshine and joined a swarm of other 
flies who were soaring contentedly above 
the porch steps. They floated in the air, 
their wings whirring softly and swiftly. 
Now one darted toward another, then flew 
apart, or circled this way and that. It was 
fun to be a cheerful young house-fly on 
a pleasant summer afternoon, especially if 
an untidy family lived near enough to be 
convenient for meals. 

If our young fly had been wise enough 
to stay where he was happy and well fed, 
he might have lived till the autumn frosts 
numbed his busy wings. Perhaps, if he 
had been lucky, he might have slipped into 



116 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

the house again and hidden in a cosy crack 
all winter till the warm days called him out 
in the spring. But, no, he was meant for 
another fate. That afternoon a breeze 
sprang up and the fly carelessly drifted 
on before it till he reached the beautiful 
garden. 

At first he seemed to enjoy being there. 
He alighted on a twig of the hedge and 
rested for a few minutes, his wings glisten- 
ing in the sunlight. Then he flitted to a 
flower and hovered above it, for it smelled 
like honey. Just as he settled upon a petal 
and began to unfold his tongue, a woolly 
black spider darted out from beneath a leaf 
and jumped for him. He slipped away 
barely in time. 

A moment later he was floating hither 
and thither above the clean gravel path. 
Of course he was hungry again and hunt- 
ing for something to eat. Now, would 
you believe it? In all that garden there 
w r as hardly a thing that he liked. There 
was no rubbish thrown out from the house 



THE UNTIDY FLY 



117 



to lie rotting in corners. There were no 
spots of grease or stains from spilled food 
on the kitchen porch. After a long search, 
the fly found an apple that had fallen from 




a tree and had begun to decay. He ate 
a little of that, and then took a few sucks 
at a dead beetle hidden under a tuft of 
grass near an ant-hill. 



118 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

When the people in the house began to 
cook supper, he caught a whiff of some- 
thing most delicious. As quickly as he 
could beat his wings, he followed the smell 
to the kitchen, and bumped against the 
screen door. Up and down and around he 
buzzed and tumbled and fluttered and 
crawled in a blundering hurry to get in- 
side. But not even the smallest rip could 
he find in the screen. 

Every time somebody opened the door, 
he tried to fly in but was brushed back by 
the careful cook. She did not want any 
untidy flies trailing their dirty feet over 
her food. Finally — sad to say! — that 
hungry young fly managed to hide near 
the knob, and just as the door was swing- 
ing swiftly shut, he tried to dart in. But 
alas, alas! he was one instant too late. He 
was caught in the crack, and he never went 
buzzing again through the garden. 



VI 

THE SPIDER WHO WOULD 
A -HUNTING GO 



VI 

THE SPIDER WHO WOULD 
A -HUNTING GO 



T^ 



I. A NURSERY FULL OF BABIES 

HE mother spider carried her nurs- 



ery of babies up to the top of her 
hole and held it where the morning 
sunshine fell warm upon it. From the out- 
side it looked like a silky yellow ball as 
large as a hazel nut. But inside — dear 
me! — you should have seen the crowd of 
tiny spiders tangled together. Each one 
was no bigger than the head of a pin, even 
with all his eight legs spread out. A spider 
is not exactly an insect, for true insects, 
such as the grasshopper, mosquito, butter- 
fly and others, have only six legs. 

The last baby spider, who came kicking 
out of his speck of an egg 9 had hardly 



122 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

room to wriggle. Such a squirming and 
tickling and sprawling and crawling under 
him and over him and around him! He 
had more than a hundred brothers and sis- 
ters. When they all began to creep out 
of their own skins, that nursery was cer- 
tainly a lively place. Some hung on to 
the walls, and some hung on to each other, 
while they pushed off their old suits with 
their hind legs. 

Before the youngest one had finished 
pulling his feet free of his own ragged 
clothes, he was nearly buried in a heap of 
empty skins. He kicked his way out and 
caught hold of one of his bigger brothers 
with his claws. That kept him steadier 
while the others jostled and scrambled and 
tumbled. Their new coats were larger 
and hairier than their old ones. Their jaws 
were stronger. Close to his mouth, each 
baby had a pair of extra legs, or palps, 
which he could use like hands. 

Suddenly the whole nursery began to 
move, bouncing the family around worse 



THE SPIDER 123 

than ever. Really, though of course they 
knew nothing about the dangers outside, a 
bird had hopped along to the top of the 
hole. The mother spider had felt him 
coming in time, and scuttled down to the 
deepest end of her house with her silken 
cocoon full of babies held tight in her legs. 
The youngest one clutched his brother 
closer and hung on till the shaking and 
jerking stopped. Perhaps he would have 
shut his eyes to get rid of the dizzy feeling 
if only he had had eyelids. But after all 
eyelids were not necessary in such a dark 
little round room. It had not a single 
window or door. The spider could sleep 
just as well with his eight eyes wide open. 
Now very likely that is a convenient way 
to have your eyes, if you wish not to miss 
anything that may be going on. Soon — 
what do you suppose? — the biggest baby 
bit a hole in the wall of the nursery. A 
dim gray spot of light shone in. As soon 
as the youngest one saw it, he started to 
crawl toward it, without waiting to wonder 



124 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

why he wanted to go. He pushed up be- 
side his brother and looked out. He could 
not see anything except the hairs on the 
mother's body. The hairs on her legs were 
so sensitive that they seemed to hear what 
the little spiders were doing. She turned 
the cocoon over and jumbled them all 
safely back in the dark again. 

The next morning when she carried her 
nurseryful up to the sunshine, the warmth 
made the babies feel lively. One after an- 
other, they came scrambling through the 
hole in the cocoon, and crept upon her 
back. There were so many of them that 
they covered her all over. The later comers 
climbed up on the others. Then those 
underneath squirmed out and tried to crawl 
on top of the crowd. By the time the 
youngest one managed to squeeze his way 
into the tangle of brown legs and soft dots 
of yellow bodies, he could not find a bit of 
room except on the tip of the mother's 
head. 

When the cocoon was empty, the old 



THE SPIDER 125 

spider let it drop. She had all she could 
do to take care of her hundred or so chil- 
dren. They rode on her back wherever she 
went for two or three weeks. Naturally 
it was rather a nuisance for her to take 
such a large family along with her when 
she wanted to go hunting. If she had 
been the kind of spider that lives in a web, 
it would have been easy to sit quiet and 
wait for a fly or some other insect to come 
near enough to be caught. But she hap- 
pened to be a ground spider who lived in 
a hole and went out to hunt for food when 
she was hungry. 

II. HOW THEIR MOTHER TOOK THEM OUT 
HUNTING 

The youngest baby had a narrow escape 
the first time they all left home together. 
The mother crept to the top of her hole 
with the little ones riding on her back. 
Just below the opening she stopped to 
listen with the hairs on her legs. The 
ground above her was still. She could not 



126 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

feel the faintest tap of a bird's claws, or 
the scurry of a lizard, or the thud of a 
clumsy hopping toad. Though she en- 
joyed hunting small creatures, she did not 
wish to be hunted herself. So of course 
she was very careful to keep her eyes open 
and her legs busy and her sensitive hairs 
alert when she journeyed away from her 
safe deep hole. 

As soon as she was satisfied that no en- 
emy lurked near, she crawled a few steps 
higher, and then halted again. The shadow 
of a falling leaf flitted across her and 
frightened her so that she scuttled back out 
of the light. After that she waited for 
several minutes before creeping cautiously 
up once more. The babies clung together 
without jostling impatiently. Though they 
did not understand why their mother was 
so slow in getting started, they felt that 
she was wiser than they were. 

In a minute she began to move onward 
again. At the opening of her burrow she 
raised the front half of her body and 



THE SPIDER 127 

peered out watchfully. She could not twist 
her head this way and that, as an insect 
can, for she had no neck. Her body 
seemed to be in two round pieces joined 
by a slender waist. On the front half were 
her legs and her head. In the rear half 
were her tubes for spinning webs. Spiders, 
you know, are the champion spinners in 
the animal world. 

Though she had eight eyes, she could 
see clearly only a few inches. However 
she really did not need keener sight. All 
the spiders that had lived before her had 
managed to get along pretty well with that 
kind of eyes. Her duty was simply to 
make the best of what senses she had, and 
to use them to take care of herself and her 
children as well as she possibly could. 

After she had looked all around, she 
ran swiftly over the ground to a clump of 
grass. That was fun for the babies. The 
youngest one on the top of the heap 
clutched his claws more tightly upon those 
below him and tried to brace himself steady. 



128 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

A breeze raffled his hairs. The fresh air 
soaked through his breathing-holes into his 
tiny body. That made him feel so happy 
that he forgot to hold fast. He loosened 
his claws for an instant, and took a joyous 
little jump to one side. Alas! just as he 
came down lightly on the back of another 
brother, the mother slipped beneath a low- 
hanging blade of grass. In brushing over 
her, it scraped off the youngest spider, 
and sent him sprawling down upon the 
earth. 

He lay there as if dead, with his legs 
curled under him. Spiders often play dead 
like that when something unexpected hap- 
pens. In a moment he stirred and began 
to crawl away — that speck of a baby 
spider, lost in a wilderness of grasses. 

What would become of him in a world 
where dangers might be hiding behind any 
leaf or pebble? If a hungry bird should 
spy him, or a lizard should come darting 
past, he would be gobbled down in a twin- 
kling. A strong- jawed ant might leap on 



THE SPIDER 129 

him and sting him to death, or some 
strange, grown-up spider might catch him 
and eat him. The lost baby would cer- 
tainly have died somehow or other if his 
mother had not come rushing back. 

She had not missed him. Oh, no! She 
had not noticed his fall, and as she could 
not very well count her family she would 
not have known it, even if a dozen or so 
had been scattered along her path. She 
had another reason for hurrying that way 
again. She was chasing a hundred-legged 
worm. Now although the worm could run 
fast, the spider could jump. And anyway, 
I should not wonder if eight long legs are 
better for many purposes than a hundred 
short ones. 

However that may be, it is sure that the 
mother spider jumped, and caught the 
worm just as he was wriggling swiftly past 
the lost baby. When she grasped the 
worm with her palps, and began to eat 
him, the baby scrambled up on her back 
in a jiffy. It was a lucky adventure for 



130 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

him, but not so pleasant for the worm, of 
course. 

For two or three weeks the young spiders 
rode with their mother wherever she went. 




The bigger they grew, the more they jos- 
tled and crowded when they climbed on her 
back. One day they crept all over her legs 
and crawled out above her eyes till she 
could hardly see. She raised her long fore- 



THE SPIDER 131 

legs, and brushed off about ten of the both- 
ersome little fellows. They dropped to 
the ground and ran to the opening of the 
burrow. When the mother went inside, 
they hurried after her and scrambled upon 
her back again before she was ready to set 
out on another hunting trip. 

After the children had changed their 
skins the second time, they began to be 
quarrelsome, perhaps because they were 
hungry and wanted something to eat. 
When the mother spider saw a red ant 
hurrying past the burrow, she jumped for 
it. The jar shook the youngest one from 
the edge of the crowd on her back. He 
picked himself up and crept near to watch 
what she was doing. She was drawing out 
cobweb threads from her spinning-tubes, 
and winding them around and around the 
ant. The ant kicked with its six legs and 
clashed its horny jaws, as it struggled to 
get free. This frightened the young spider 
so that he turned and scampered away as 
fast as he could go. But in a moment he 



132 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

stole cautiously back again. Some of his 
brothers and sisters trotted after him. 

They waited till the ant was dead. As 
soon as the mother had crushed it tender 
in her jaws, she held it while her babies ate 
it. To be sure, one ant was not large enough 
to feed a hundred little spiders, so the old 
spider had to work hard to catch enough 
to feed her family. Once she captured a 
big fat beetle and then they all had a feast 
together. 

III. HOW THEY ALL RAN AWAY FROM HOME 

The youngest baby tried to stay close by 
the mother spider much of the time. That 
was how it happened that he was almost 
always near enough to get a bite when she 
caught anything. Naturally he grew faster 
than the others, because he was able to eat 
oftener. Very soon he was as big as any 
of his brothers, though he had hatched last 
of all. 

By-and-by the mother seemed to get 
tired of feeding and carrying her children. 



THE SPIDER 133 

One morning she was so cross that she 
made every one scramble down from her 
back. When the youngest tried to climb 
up again, she reached for him with her 
forelegs and threw him several inches. She 
was careful not to throw him hard enough 
to hurt. But still, such treatment must 
have wounded his feelings a little. It made 
him wish to run away from home the first 
chance he could find. 

He did not need to wait long, for even 
if the mother did have eight eyes she could 
not watch a hundred babies every minute. 
That very afternoon he crept from the bur- 
row and ran to a stem of grass. First he 
touched the root with the spinning-tubes 
at the end of his body. Out of the tubes 
flowed a thread of cobweb silk. As he 
crawled up the grass, the thread length- 
ened behind him. When he had climbed a 
few inches, one of his brothers followed 
him, clinging to the first thread, and draw- 
ing another after him. Then came a dozen 
others, each one adding a new thread to 



134 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

the line that reached from the ground up 
along the stem. 

When the leader reached the top of the 
grass blade, he walked around on it, still 
drawing out his silken thread. This was 
lucky for him, because the wind was sway- 
ing the grasses so hard that it shook him 
off. Instead of dropping straight down, 
he swung at the end of his thread. He 
lowered himself slowly by spinning it out 
longer inch by inch. 

He chanced to land near the home burrow 
and hurried inside just as his mother was 
spinning a door over the opening. She 
could feel that the night would be cold, 
and so she wanted to keep the children shut 
up safe within the warm hole. Doubtless 
she had seen the dozen runaways go scam- 
pering off toward the grass. The youngest 
squeezed under the edge of the new door 
and ran to join the others at the lower end. 
He was the only one of the wanderers who 
found his way back. 

After that, whenever the mother spider 



THE SPIDER 135 

opened the door on a sunny day, some of 
the children would run off and never come 
home again. Each one wanted to make 
a home of his own, and live by himself. 

One sunshiny autumn morning the 
youngest spider started out alone without 
saying good-by to his mother or the half 
dozen little fellows who still followed her 
around. He trotted off past the clump of 
grasses and under a gooseberry bush. Just 
as he was crawling over a twig, he hap- 
pened to look up. There close beside him 
he saw one of his sisters digging a burrow. 
She had that moment come out of her tiny 
hole, with a speck of earth in her jaws. 
Her brother ran nearer to see what she 
was doing. Instantly she dropped the 
speck of earth, and sprang forward to 
chase him away. She did not wish to be 
bothered by any of the family now that 
she had her own home. 

The visitor scampered on in a hurry. 
He did not see any use in trying to stay 
where he was not wanted, especially as his 



136 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

sister was bigger than he was. When he 
reached the next bush, he went exploring 
hither and thither till he found a spot of 
soft moist earth. Here he dug a burrow 
of his own. He dug it by biting out specks 
of soil and carrying them to one side in 
his jaws. He knew how to do it without 
being told. Although he was so young, 
he could do everything that his mother 
could. 

Perhaps you would not find it very 
thrilling to live alone in a hole under a 
gooseberry bush for weeks and weeks. But 
this spider had some exciting adventure 
nearly every day. He spent his life in 
hunting or being hunted. One morning a 
robin pecked the hole open. If she had 
not had her bill full of earth when the 
spider scuttled out she would surely have 
snapped him up. He had but a moment 
to scurry under a clod. 

Another morning, when he was wander- 
ing around an ant-hill, hunting for tiny 
red ants, he was almost caught by a lizard. 



THE SPIDER 137 

More than once he was chased all the way 
home to his hole by some big hungry old 
spider. Many a time he scuttled into 
hiding, every leg shaking with fright. 

Now, would you believe it? Spiders are 
very good friends to the green growing 
things in a garden. They eat the tiny 
insects that suck the juices of plants. They 
catch little caterpillars that gnaw the ten- 
der leaves. They devour small beetles and 
bugs that nibble the roots. That is how 
they help the garden to grow. This is why 
you should be kind to spiders, for they 
rarely bite people. They do not crawl over 
the food in the pantry as flies do. They 
do not care to sting you as mosquitoes do. 
If you will look at them closely, you will 
see that some of them are beautiful, with 
glistening colors. 

IV. HOW THEY FLEW WITHOUT WINGS 

As the days became shorter and the 
nights cooler, our little spider stayed under- 
ground in his burrow more and more of 



138 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

the time. One afternoon in October he felt 
the sunshine warm above him and crept out 
in search of adventures. Perhaps he was 
tired of living in the same hole week after 
week. And anyway he was getting too 
big to slip inside easily. 

He set forth on his travels without a look 
behind. If he had looked behind, he would 
have seen something to worry him. A 
slender wasp was peering about under the 
dead leaves that had fallen from the bushes. 
She was hunting for spiders. By the time 
she reached the empty little burrow and 
peered within, its lucky owner was halfway 
up the stalk of a hollyhock that grew be- 
side the hedge. 

Here and there, between a leaf and the 
stalk, he found a cobweb barring his path, 
and crept cautiously out around it. One 
of the webs was triangular. One was 
round as a wheel, and in the middle of it 
hung a big black and yellow spider with 
her feet resting on the silken lines. If he 
had stepped on one of them, she would 



THE SPIDER 139 

have run toward him to see if anything 
good to eat was entangled in the sticky 
lines. 

A few inches above this spider's home, 
one of her children was spinning a web 
about the size of a silver dollar. He had 
fastened three threads in the shape of a 
triangle between a leaf and the stalk. He 
was running busily round and round, draw- 
ing out new threads and weaving them in 
the form of an uneven spiral. Some time 
you ought to watch a spider spinning a 
web. 

Our little fellow who was climbing up 
the hollyhock was not much interested in 
webs, as he liked better to live in a hole. 
He did not stop to look, but trotted to the 
tip of a leaf that touched the hedge. Over 
he jumped and hurried on till he was at 
the tiptop of the highest twig and could 
climb no farther. Then what do you imag- 
ine he did? He stiffened his legs and 
raised the end of his body where the spin- 
ning-tubes were. From the tubes came a 



140 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

ray of threads that floated out in the 
breeze. Longer and longer it blew up 
above him till it pulled harder than he 
could hold. All at once he loosened his 
eight claws and sprang into the air. Away 
he went sailing across the field with the 
lines of silk streaming in the wind. He 
was flying upside-down, with his feet cling- 
ing to a tangle of delicate threads. 

That was almost as much fun as having 
wings. The sun shone, and the breeze 
blew, and the air glistened with floating 
threads of young spiders out a-flying that 
autumn afternoon. There were all sorts 
of spiders that had come from all sorts of 
homes. Some lived in holes, some lived 
in webs, some lived in cracks of wood, some 
lived under stones, and some lived on trees 
or bushes, or in the grass. When our little 
wanderer went sailing over a fence, he was 
almost near enough to see dozens of others 
running and jumping in frolic at each 
other while they were getting ready to spin 
out their threads for flying. 




'there were perils in the air as well as on the ground." 

[Page 143 



THE SPIDER 143 

Away and away, higher, higher, higher, 
above the fence, above the bushes, above 
the tops of the tallest trees, he sailed. But 
there were perils in the air as well as on 
the ground for adventurous little spiders. 
Once a bird darted toward him with such 
a rush of wind from her flapping wings 
that he was blown just beyond reach as 
she snapped at him. 

Perhaps that narrow escape made him 
feel that he had been flying long enough, 
so he began to draw in the floating threads. 
With his jaws and palps and fore-feet he 
wound the silk into a flossy ball at his 
mouth. As the lines grew shorter, the 
wind could not carry him along so lightly 
as before. Slowly he dropped lower and 
lower till he swung against the tip of an 
oak leaf, kicked his legs free from the tan- 
gled threads, and scampered down the 
trunk. 

He found himself in a grove of trees 
far from the beautiful garden. Of course 
he did not know how far he had travelled, 



144 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

or where he was. All that he could see 
was a small space of rough gray bark with 
brown leaves lying around it. He slipped 
under a leaf and crawled beneath an acorn 
to rest till morning. 

The night was so cold that frost gath- 
ered thick and white on the ground. Even 
in his snug corner the little spider felt 
chilled. He lay curled up in a tiny ball 
till the sun had melted the frost on the 
wet, glistening leaves. Then he crept out 
and caught a beetle for breakfast. 

After that he was strong enough to dig 
another hole. This was to be his home 
where he would sleep all winter long. So 
he dug it deeper than his other burrow, 
and made a door of bits of twigs woven 
together with silk. After he had gone in- 
side, he fastened the door down over the 
opening with threads. Now he was ready 
to curl down safe and warm in his house 
and sleep till April sunshine thawed the 
ground above and called him forth to go 
once more a-hunting. 



VII 

THIS IS THE HOUSE THE ANT 
BUILT 



VII 

THIS IS THE HOUSE THE ANT 
BUILT 

I. HOW THE HOUSE WAS BEGlTN 

IT was an exciting day for the little 
brown ants that lived in the meadow. 
Out of every doorway in the hill they 
had come swarming. Hither and thither 
scurried the small, wingless ones, now dart- 
ing this way, now rushing that way, as they 
prodded, and pushed, and pinched the 
large, winged ones to make them hurry 
faster. Those without wings wanted the 
others to fly away and start homes for new 
families of ants. 

The first winged ant that went running 
down from the round hillock scampered 
up a lily leaf as fast as she could move 
her six nimble legs. No wonder she was 



148 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

in haste. Every time she stopped for an 
instant, the little one behind her poked 
her with a hard tiny head or nipped her 
with a pair of horny jaws. Up she scur- 
ried to the tip of the leaf, and opened 
her gauzy wings that flashed in the light. 
She kept raising and lowering them un- 
easily, for she wished to fly, and yet she 
was almost afraid, for she had never flown 
before. 

All her life till this summer day she 
had lived in the pleasant dark rooms of 
the nest under the hill, except when she 
was brought out with her winged brothers 
and sisters to play on a pebble or swing 
on a grass stem in the sunshine. On those 
other days the wingless ants had taken 
care of her and fed her and coaxed her 
back into the nest again. But now they 
were trying to drive her away. And 
strange to say, she was eager to go! She 
longed to fly up, up, up into the warm 
bright air above the meadow. 

On the edge of the leaf she hesitated, 



HOUSE THE ANT BUILT 



149 



her wings quivering. Then came the nip, 
nip, from behind. She swayed to and fro, 
her feet unclasped their hold, and she 
soared slowly above the lily. She was 




flying! From other leaves and grasses 
near by flitted her brothers and sisters. 
Soon the air was alive with winged ants, 
— rising, falling, dancing in and out of 
the swarm. They drifted onward with 
the wind as they fluttered and whirled. 



150 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

When the sun went down and the chill 
of twilight began to numb the restless 
tiny bodies, one by one they dropped to 
the ground. The one who had first 
climbed the lily leaf tried to creep under 
a twig to hide for the night, but her trail- 
ing gauzy wings caught on a splinter and 
jerked her backward. When she started 
to squeeze beneath a stone, they held her 
back again. Somehow she knew that she 
would never need them for flying any 
more. So she broke them off. She 
flapped them back and forth and pulled at 
them with her feet. She rubbed against 
pebbles and twisted suddenly this way 
and that till finally the frail wings 
snapped off and lay tattered and torn on 
the ground. Then she slipped beneath 
the stone and rested till morning. 

Though she was tired from her flight, 
she did not sleep quietly. She lay on her 
side with her two big eyes and three little 
ones wide open, because, you see, she had 
no lids to close over them. Once in a 



HOUSE THE ANT BUILT 151 

while she lifted first one foot, then the 
other. Perhaps if an ant can dream at 
all, she was dreaming of the busy days 
to come. Now and then her body twitched 
nervously, and her slender feelers quiv- 
ered in her sleep. 

In the early morning she began to 
awaken. She stretched out her head; next 
she lifted a leg and shook it. In a minute 
she scrambled up on all six legs and walked 
toward the light shining in under the edge 
of the stone. There she stopped to yawn 
and clean herself before beginning work. 
She licked her face and head with her 
tongue, as a cat does. She drew her legs 
between her jaws to wash them. She 
combed her feelers with her forefeet. 
Then she started out to find a good place 
to build her house. 

Now, though she did not know it, she 
had chanced to drop to earth right in the 
middle of the beautiful garden. The 
stone under which she had been sleeping 
lay near the gravel path. She ran this 



152 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

way and that, touching with her sensitive 
feelers first one pebble and then another. 
The ground seemed too hard for digging 
easily. You see, she had no shovel or 
pickaxe to use; she had only her horny 
little jaws for biting up the specks of dirt, 
for carrying them away, for getting food, 
for fighting, and for whatever else she 
had to do. 

After she had decided that she did not 
like to dig in the path, she hurried on to 
a bed of vegetables. But the soil there 
had just been raked over and was too 
loose to suit her. It would have caved in 
if she had tried to make a tiny tunnel 
through it. 

At last she found exactly the spot she 
wanted, close to the edge of the path. It 
was neither too hard nor too soft, neither 
too moist nor too dry. It was not too 
sandy, or too clayey, or too marshy. 

Without pausing to rest and wish for 
somebody to help her, she started to work. 
She bit out a mouthful of earth and laid 



HOUSE THE ANT BUILT 153 

it down a little way off from the begin- 
ning of her house. Soon the soil was piled 
in a hillock of crumbly brown specks all 
around the hole. She carried each new 
mouthful up to the top and let it roll 
down the outside. So she kept on biting 
up bits of soil, carrying them up to the 
entrance and letting them roll away. 

II. TAKING CARE OF THE BABIES 

When she had dug down far enough, 
she hollowed out a tiny room and laid an 
egg not nearly so big as the head of a 
pin. Then she was busier than ever. 
What with laying new eggs, carrying 
them up into the sunshine when the day 
was cold, or down into the shady nurser- 
ies when the air was too hot outside, what 
with cleaning the house and digging new 
rooms, she really did not have time to 
eat. 

In two or three weeks, a baby ant was 
hatched from the first egg that she had 
laid. It looked almost like the egg itself, 



154 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

except that the baby's body had a small 
groove around it, just below its head, It 
was like a soft white worm. The mother 
fed it with food from her own mouth. 

Now she could hardly find a moment, 
even to sleep. When she was not feeding 
the baby, or brushing and washing it with 
her tongue, she was carrying the eggs 
from one room to another, or licking them 
to keep them from getting dry and hard. 
All day long and most of the night her 
six busy legs trotted up and down, to and 
fro, in and out, till they fairly ached from 
weariness. Whenever she had a spare 
minute she dug her house a bit larger and 
laid another egg. It takes a great deal 
of work to be the mother of a whole ant- 
hill. 

By the time there were six little ones 
hatched, the eldest was ready to fall 
asleep and change to a grown-up ant. It 
must have been a relief to the mother 
when the baby stopped eating and began 
to spin a web over her own body. After 



HOUSE THE ANT BUILT 155 

she was covered all around in a safe warm 
shell of silk, she curled down quietly and 
slept for almost four weeks. While she 
slept, the tired little mother kept on work- 
ing harder than ever. She would be glad 
enough to have a grown-up daughter to 
aid her by and by. 

At last one day the mother noticed that 
the cocoon moved and almost turned over. 
Something was stirring inside. She came 
running swiftly to help the young ant 
crawl out. She unfolded the six legs 
which had been doubled up in the narrow 
cradle. She smoothed the threadlike feel- 
ers, placed some food in the hungry new 
mouth, and licked the soft skin of the 
slender body. Then she must have told 
this eldest child of hers to hurry and take 
care of the other babies. 

Yes, there were dozens of babies in the 
nest by this time. Some were fast asleep 
in their cocoons; others were getting 
ready to spin the webs around themselves; 
others were still soft squirming little 



156 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

worms. The young ant began at once to 
run hither and thither in her eagerness to 
help. 

She was nervous at first. Once she 
dropped a baby when she tried to carry 
it from one room to another. To be sure, 
the child was not hurt because she had 
such a very short distance to fall from her 
sister's tiny jaws to the floor. Still, the 
young ant was not such a good nurse as 
the mother. Sometimes while she was 
licking her baby sisters, she made a mis- 
take and gave a nip that caused them to 
wriggle and squirm. When she started 
to feed one, as her mother did, by patting 
it on each side of the face w r ith her anten- 
nae, and then laying its lips against hers 
to drink the sweet liquid from her mouth, 
it twisted away as if she had squeezed it 
too tigRt. 

However she kept on trying, and by 
the time that two other sisters had been 
helped from their cocoons, she could take 
care of the babies very well. Indeed, the 



HOUSE THE ANT BUILT 157 

mother began to leave most of the work 
to her daughters now, while she spent all 
her time and strength in laying fresh 
eggs. 

III. FEEDING THE FAMILY 

One morning the eldest sister set forth 
to hunt for food. This was not her first 
trip out-of-doors, for she had often car- 
ried eggs up to the warm air above. Now 
she was going alone on a journey, and 
perhaps she would never come back. The 
beautiful garden was to her a world of 
dangers. A bird might snap at her; a 
spider might spring upon her; or some- 
body's heavy foot might crush her flat. 

She was not afraid, however, doubtless 
because she did not stop to think of what 
might happen. Away scurried the little 
brown ant down the little brown hill. She 
ran across the path, her head bent toward 
the ground, her feelers touching every 
pebble and twig within reach. Now she 
scrambled over a bit of gravel; now she 



158 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

squeezed beneath a stalk of grass; now 
she trotted around the edge of a mon- 
strous chasm made by some human per- 
son's heel. Such a chasm may not seem 
monstrous to you; but then you must 
remember that you are much bigger than 
an ant. 

On the other side of the path she hur- 
ried forward zigzagging this way and that 
through a wilderness of grasses that 
stretched around on every side for inches 
and inches. Indeed irt was a forest as 
long as the path itself and as much as two 
feet wide. At its farther border the ant 
smelled something good to eat. She stood 
still for a moment, and twitched her feel- 
ers so that she could tell from which di- 
rection floated that delicious fragrance. 

Ah, now she knew! Hurry-skurry, she 
scampered toward the stem of a lily 
plant. There in a small hollow at the 
root lay a tiny fly that had been drowned 
by a sudden shower while he lay asleep 
in the lily-cup above. His body had been 



HOUSE THE AXT BUILT 159 

washed down the stalk to the hollow. The 
ant sprang upon it and lifted it in her 
jaws. 

Dear me! but it was heavy, and so 
much bigger than she was herself that she 
could hardly balance it even when she 
propped it with her forefeet. She 
dragged it toward home very slowly be- 
cause it was so big and she was so little. 
She had not noticed before how rough the 
path was. Now the dead fly's wing 
caught on a grass blade and almost 
jerked her back in a somersault. Xow 
it had to be pulled and hauled over a peb- 
ble. Xow it needed to be lugged toil- 
somely all the way along one side of a 
fallen twig, around the end and up the 
other side. 

The ant was tired out when she reached 
home at last. And then, after all that 
trouble, to find that the fly was too large 
to go into the nest! Perhaps if she had 
been a little girl, she would just have sat 
down and cried. But being an ant she 



160 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

trotted into the hole and called her sisters 
to help. She could tell them things by 
rubbing her feelers against theirs. Two 
of them followed her outside and gnawed 
off the fly's wings so that he could be 
dragged down into the dining-room. 

The next day she started out to hunt 
for honey. At first she tried to get it 
from flowers. It seemed as if she was 
always in a hurry; you could guess that 
from the zigzag, nervous way in which 
she ran hither and thither. It really was 
too bad that she wasted her time over the 
flowers. The first one she visited was a 
yellow snap-dragon. When she reached 
the tip of the stem, she found that the 
pretty petals covered the golden heart 
where the honey was hidden, and she was 
not strong enough to push in. 

Then she trotted off to a verbena. 
When she began to climb up the stalk, 
she kept running against the sharp points 
of tiny hairs. Every time one tickled her 
eyes or brushed her feelers, she seized it 



HOUSE THE ANT BUILT 161 

in her jaws, because she thought it was 
something trying to fight her. This made 
her so cross that she turned and scrambled 
to the ground. 

Next she began to creep up a milk- 
weed, but her claws cut through the green 
stem and sticky white juice flowed out. 
She could hardly pull her claws free and 
struggle away. The dirt on the ground 
stuck to every one of her claws so that 
she had to stop and clean them. The last 
blossom that she visited was one with 
petals curving outward all around the 
heart. When she tried to climb over the 
slippery edge, she slid and tumbled off. 
After picking herself up, and shaking 
her legs to see if any were broken, she 
gave up seeking honey from flowers. It 
was better for the flowers to be visited 
by bees instead of ants, because a bee 
sucks honey from only one kind of plant 
at a time. If the flowers grew so that 
ants could run from one to another, the 
yellow pollen in their hearts would get 



162 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

all mixed up, and that would be bad for 
the seeds. You will learn more about 
this when you study botany. 

Now where do you think the little ant 
went to find honey to take home? First 
she climbed a tree to explore. Such a 
long way up, and the bark was so rough 
that she had to stop and rest several 
times. It was hard work to clamber up 
bumps as big as mountains to her, to go 
scrambling down into cracks like deep 
valleys, or to run zigzag along the edge 
of a tremendous precipice half an inch 
high. When she reached the first branch, 
she trotted out on it, twitching her feel- 
ers now to one side, now to the other. 

In a few moments she saw a tiny green 
bug standing with its head bent as it 
sucked the juice of the tree. She hur- 
ried up behind it and waited till a drop of 
something like water oozed out at the end 
of the small green body. The ant put 
her mouth close down and swallowed 
the drop quickly. It tasted sweet as the 



HOUSE THE ANT BUILT 163 

honey from flowers. As soon as another 
drop appeared, she drank that too. Then 
she stroked the bug's back gently with her 
feelers till a third drop oozed forth. That 
was how she milked the little green cow. 

There were other ant cows, or aphids, 
as their real name is, on the branch. The 
brown ant went from one to another till 
she was so full of honey-dew that she 
looked as round as a bubble. Then she 
trudged away down the trunk and back 
through the garden to the nest in the 
little brown hill. One of her sisters ran 
to meet her. The honey-bearer rose on 
her four hind legs with her front legs 
outstretched and her head lifted. The 
other stood up in the same position and 
pressed her jaws against her sister's till 
a droplet of honey flowed from one mouth 
to the other. Two or three others came 
to drink a drop or two. Then the honey- 
bearer pushed past them and crept into 
the house to feed the babies and the 
mother ant in the same way. 



164 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

IV. HAPPY DAYS AT HOME 

So the late summer slipped by. There 
was always work for everybody to do. 
The mother ant kept laying eggs. The 
eggs kept hatching into soft white hun- 
gry babies. The babies ate and grew till 
they were ready to spin their own cradles 
and fall asleep in the wonderful sleep 
that changed them to nimble-footed work- 
ers. The busy young workers nursed the 
babies, fed the mother, took care of the 
eggs, dug the hduse larger, milked the 
cows, hunted for small tender caterpillars 
and dead flies, gathered seeds to store for 
the winter, and once in a while went out 
to fight the ants from another nest. 

One day a little sister discovered a trail 
of molasses that the grocer's boy had 
spilled on his way to the back door of 
the house at the end of the garden. She 
hurried home to tell the others. Soon a 
long line of ants were coming and going, 
one behind the other. They followed al- 
ways the same path, winding between the 



HOUSE THE ANT BUILT 165 

grass stems, around the pebbles, across the 
walk and up the porch steps. The ants 
who were marching to get more molasses 
waved their feelers when they passed those 
returning with their burden of sweets. 
Though ever on the alert to spring upon 
a stranger and tear and bite and wrestle, 
they were kind and helpful and affection- 
ate to all those belonging in their own 
nest. 

They worked steadily all the morning 
and were still trudging back and forth in 
the afternoon. Then something disturbed 
them. Suddenly those who were crossing 
the path stopped, waved their feelers, 
broke from the line, ran uneasily this way 
and that, and finally scurried off in all 
directions. From around the lilac bush 
came marching an army of big red ants. 
They did not move in step side by side, 
but pushed on close together in a long 
narrow crowd of hundreds and hundreds. 
Forward they pressed without paying 
any attention to the frightened brown 



166 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

ants. They were on their way to a nest 
where some black ants lived. So on they 
journeyed over the path, across a flower 
bed, under the hedge and zigzag over a 
broad rock to the foot of a tree. 

The black ants saw the red ants com- 
ing and began to run hither and thither. 
Some scampered away to hide in the grass 
or climb up weeds for safety. Others 
scuttled into the nest and tried to carry 
the eggs and babies with them as they 
fled to the deeper rooms underground. 
The big red ants rushed up the hill and 
dashed in at the doorways. They went 
straight to the nurseries, but they did not 
kill the young ones. 

When they came out, some were carry- 
ing eggs; others had the soft little wrig- 
gling wormlike babies in their jaws; oth- 
ers were holding the cocoons in which 
slept those who were changing. They 
were taking to their own home these chil- 
dren of the black ants so that they might 
have servants to work for them. When 



HOUSE THE ANT BUILT 167 

the captives grew up, they took care of 
the red ants' eggs, and nursed their ba- 
bies, and kept the house clean. 

The brown ants, however, who had been 
busy with the molasses, knew nothing of 
this dreadful robbery. They never stole 
other ants' babies. They preferred to do 
their own work and attend to their own 
children. This was all the better for 
them, because work made them stronger 
and healthier, and very likely happier 
too, than the lazy ants who kept slaves. 

When the autumn days grew cooler the 
little brown ants seemed to become dull 
and drowsy. The mother ant laid fewer 
eggs. The nurses were less careful to 
carry the eggs from one room to another 
every day. The soft white squirming 
babies lay quiet, without eating, for hours 
at a time. The young ones, shut close in 
their cocoons, slept longer and longer. 
The workers who went out to find food 
for the nest moved more slowly and came 
trudging home sooner than they had done 



168 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

during the warm summer weather. The 
tiny green cows on the trees and plants were 
nipped with frost and died. But some of 
their eggs had been taken away by the 
ants and hidden safe in the deep rooms 
underground, where the cold could not 
reach them. 

Winter clouds sifted snow over the ant- 
hill, and icy winds blew through the bare 
garden. In their house with its winding 
galleries and wide halls the queen dozed 
beside a heap of her newest eggs. Now 
and then a nurse crawled slowly to the 
piles of seeds in the store-room, and took 
a listless nibble here and there. Then 
she crept back among the sleeping babies 
to watch for any who might wake up 
hungry for a moment. 

When the spring sunshine thawed the 
frozen soil, the ant-hill began to stir with 
fresh life. The mother began to lay eggs 
faster. The babies began to squirm and 
wriggle with impatience to be fed oftener. 
The sleeping young ones began to kick 



HOUSE THE ANT BUILT 169 

in their cradles, eager to escape. The 
busy workers ran to and fro in the big- 
gest kind of a hurry. 

No wonder that they felt nervous with 
all the work to do! What with caring for 
the eggs, and watching the babies, and 
cleaning the house, and digging new 
rooms, and hunting for food, and tending 
the little green cows, they were almost 
worn out before darkness gave them a 
chance to rest. Indeed, at some specially 
busy times they worked late into the 
night. 

This summer brought them an extra 
task. Among the young ants waking 
from their long sleep were a number of 
brothers and sisters with wings. These 
did not help with the work of the home. 
They did not even take care of them- 
selves, but were fed like babies. Once in 
a while they were coaxed to go outside 
and play in the fresh air. They crawled 
along a grass blade till it swayed up and 
down beneath their weight, while they 



170 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

clung to it as if swinging for fun. Some- 
times they chased each other around a 
pebble, or stood on their hind legs and 
waved their feelers and clashed their 
horny jaws. Perhaps they felt that it was 
much pleasanter to be a winged ant than 
a busy little worker always in a hurry- 
scurry over something that had to be 
done. 

But alas for their lazy daj^s! One 
afternoon they were all driven from the 
nest, just as their mother had been pushed 
away from her first home the year before. 
The wingless ones nipped and prodded 
and poked them till they spread their 
filmy wings and flew up, up, up into the 
warm afternoon air. Swarms of winged 
ants from other nests joined them, and 
away they drifted, whirling and dancing 
with the breeze. 

After the joyous flight was over, here 
and there they dropped to the ground. 
But only a few from the hundreds in the 
flashing swarm lived to start new nests 



HOUSE THE ANT BUILT 171 

the next morning. Many of them had 
been snapped up by birds and bats and 
dragon-flies as they danced in the twi- 
light. Many had died of cold during the 
night or been gobbled by watchful spiders 
and solemn fat toads. Still, in spite of 
such perils, dozens and dozens of new lit- 
tle brown houses began to be built along 
the road and in the meadows that late 
summer. And back in the old nest by the 
garden path the little brown ants worked 
as busily as ever all day long. 



VIII 

HOW DOTH THE LITTLE BUSY 
BEE 



VIII 

HOW DOTH THE LITTLE BUSY 
BEE 

I. NO TIME TO PLAY 

THE young bee was beginning to 
wake up from her long sleep. She 
stirred uneasily. Her four filmy 
wings that lay folded damp and soft at her 
sides quivered, and her six slender legs un- 
curled their tiny claws. She lifted her head 
and moved it to and fro. Close around her 
pressed the smooth walls of the waxen cell 
of honeycomb in which she was lying. 

Two weeks earlier she had gone to sleep 
a fat little baby bee like a white worm, and 
now she was waking up a grown bee with 
wonderful big eyes for seeking gaily-col- 
ored blossoms, with a long tongue for suck- 
ing honey, with jointed feelers for touching 



176 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

and talking, with wings to bear her through 
the garden, and with legs that she could use 
for walking and clinging, for combing and 
brushing, and even, like baskets, for carry- 
ing the yellow pollen dust from the hearts 
of the flowers to the hive. 

Very likely she was not in the least sur- 
prised at the change, for bees always change 
in that way. It would have been most re- 
markable indeed if she had stayed just the 
same from the first day to the last of her 
nap. But if it had been you, that of course 
would be different. Suppose you should 
go to sleep a soft white worm and wake up 
a gauzy-winged bee? Wouldn't that be 
surprising ! 

Well, the first thing that young bee did 
with the little jaws of her new head was 
to bite a hole through the waxen curtain 
that covered the outer end of the honeycomb 
cell. Then she poked her head through 
and looked around with her big eyes. It 
was dark there in the middle of the hive. 
Above and below her stretched a wall of 



THE BUSY LITTLE BEE 177 

honeycomb from ceiling to floor. Opposite 
her, so near that she could almost touch 
it with her feelers, another wall like that 
in which she had lived all her baby life 
reached also from ceiling to floor. No 
wonder it was dark in that narrow passage, 
especially as the one little door of the hive 
was so far away beyond the nursery honey- 
combs that she could catch only a glimpse 
of a faint ray of light stealing in from the 
sunshiny morning outside. 

In the dusk around her something was 
moving. She could see dim forms of many 
bees crawling over the honeycomb. Two 
or three of them climbed up to her. One 
gnawed the hole bigger so that they could 
help her squeeze through to the outside. 
She clung there, weak and pale, digging 
her claws into the wax, while her nurses 
licked her with their tongues and brushed 
her with the brushes on their hind legs. 
Another brought a drop of honey and laid 
it in her mouth. As soon as she swallowed 
it, she began to feel stronger. It was her 



178 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

first taste of food since she had fallen asleep 
so many days before. 

While she rested, waiting for her wings 
to dry and her legs to cease their trembling, 
the nurses pushed into her empty cell and 
cleaned away the bits of wax, the bee-bread, 
and the silken threads which she had spun 
over the inside of the door. They were 
making it ready for another egg out of 
which would hatch a new baby. After they 
had finished this work, they went creeping 
onward to other cells where other babies 
were lying, some squirming hungrily, some 
curling down for a nap, some ready to bite 
their way out. The new little nurse crawled 
after them. She did not even think of stop- 
ping to play a little while she was young. 
She was eager to begin to help with the 
work of the hive. 

Such a busy time as she had for the next 
w r eek! There were hundreds and hundreds 
of babies, each in its own tiny cell. There 
were hundreds and hundreds of nurses, for 
every young bee went to work nursing as 



THE BUSY LITTLE BEE 179 

soon as she woke from her long sleep and 
found herself changed to a grown up bee. 
Nursing was the easiest work of all, and 
that was why the youngest ones did it till 
they were strong enough to go out to 
gather honey from the garden. 

However even the easiest work in the 
hive was not much like play, though it was 
certainly interesting. Our little bee had 
not a minute to spare. Now she poked her 
head in at the open end of a cell to see 
if the egg there had hatched yet. If a new 
baby was lying curled down in the end of 
the waxen cave, she reached down to lay 
her mouth against its lips and feed it with 
food already digested in her own stomach. 
This special food is called bee- jelly, and 
is fed to every baby worker for the first 
two days of its life, and to a queen all her 
life. 

Perhaps the next thing this nurse did 
was to climb to the honey-cells at the top 
of the hive to bring a drop of the sweet 
liquid to one of the older babies. Or it 



180 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

might be that her part was to visit the comb 
where the pollen dust was kept, and to 
carry a speck back to mix with honey to 
make bee-bread. Now she packed a bit of 
bee-bread down beside a big baby who was 
ready to go to sleep. Then she aided in 
closing the open end of that cell with a 
curtain of wax so that the sleeper would 
not be disturbed during the wonderful nap. 
Now she clung in front of the closed cell 
and beat her wings till she felt hot enough 
to melt. The warmth of her body, added 
to the warmth from the other small nurses 
who were dancing and fluttering beside her, 
heated the air near them. This heat made 
the baby asleep behind the curtain change 
faster than while it was cool. A few mo- 
ments later she was hurrying with the oth- 
ers to help a newly awakened young bee 
out of the cell, to lick her furry coat, to 
brush her and comb her and lay a drop 
of honey on her tongue. 



THE BUSY LITTLE BEE 181 

II. OFF OK FLASHING WINGS 

And at last, after a busy week of this, 
how strange it was the first time she went 
flying! She did not go alone, for almost 
all the other nurses who were just her age 
started out the same day. Since the queen 
bee laid many dozens of eggs every day, 
of course dozens of babies hatched at about 
the same time and grew up together. Such 
a crowd of them as went creeping over the 
nursery honeycombs toward the entrance 
that sunshiny summer morning! 

They crawled out upon the platform in 
front of the door. Our little bee was afraid 
of the light at first. The two large black 
eyes on the sides of her head shone like 
jewels. These two remarkable eyes were 
really made up of six or seven thousand 
single eyes close together. In the middle 
of her forehead was a group of three simple 
eyes. No wonder the sunshine seemed daz- 
zling to her after the dusky shadows of the 
windowless hive! 



182 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

Perhaps she trembled for a moment and 
moved closer to her sisters. Surely the 
world outside the hive was very big and 
bright and terrible. Surely it would be 
safer to slip back again into the warm, dim, 
friendly darkness of the hive. It may be 
that she turned and lifted her wings to help 
her hurry faster. And then — and then — 
it was the queerest thing! Somehow the 
two upper wings hooked upon the two 
lower ones, and were held spread wide open. 
She flapped them once, twice, gave a little 
leap upward, and away she went sailing 
through the air. 

The fresh air flowed into her body 
through the tiny breathing holes on each 
side. This made her feel light and clean 
and joyous, even though she could not 
quite get over her instinctive fear of being 
separated from her sisters in the crowded 
hive. After a few circling flights over the 
bushes near-by, she alighted on the plat- 
form and, unhooking her wings, folded 
them as before and crept back to her work 



THE BUSY LITTLE BEE 183 

in the nursery honeycombs. It was not 
until a week later that she set forth on her 
first visit to gather honey from the flowers 
in the garden. 

How sweet the air was that beautiful 
morning! Any bee could tell, just from 
smelling of it with her feelers, that flowers 
were unclosing gay petals from over their 
golden hearts everywhere in the garden. 
Our little bee crept out of the hive and 
paused on the platform. Did she know 
that she was going to get honey? Who 
had told her that she must seek it in a 
flower instead of in a waxen cell of honey- 
comb where she had always found it before? 
How did she know what a flower looked 
like? She had never yet seen one in bloom? 

Perhaps she did not know where she was 
going or what she was seeking? All that 
she knew was that she wanted somehow to 
spread her wings and fly away from the 
hive. Many bees were humming about the 
platform. Some were starting out and 
others were returning. Almost before she 



184 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

could make up her mind to follow one or 
another she found herself flitting upward. 
A moment later she circled and darted back 
again in fright. What if she should lose 
her way in the wide sea of light and air 
that reached to the skies? Again and again 
she set forth, only to swoop quickly home 
after a short timid flight. At last she rose 
high, with her head turned toward the hive, 
and hovered there, looking around at the 
garden below her. She wanted to be sure 
to remember the path back. Then off on 
flashing wings she went to her new work. 

III. HURRAH FOR THE HONEY ! 

This was different from pushing through 
the crowds in the dim shadowy hive. She 
went soaring, now up, now down, now in 
long dipping flight hither and thither! 
There was no danger here of bumps and 
bangs and bruises against other hairy little 
bodies crawling close together over the 
combs. 



THE BUSY LITTLE BEE 185 

Across the lawn she flew toward the 
flower beds. A fragrance floating upward 
made her feelers quiver. Her shining eyes 
saw spots of bright color where the mari- 
golds opened their yellow blossoms in the 
sunshine. Darting nearer she hovered 
above them, her wings buzzing against her 
body. Suddenly she dropped upon a blos- 
som and thrust her tongue down into its 
golden heart. Her little black tongue went 
wriggling in and out of its tube as she 
lapped up the honey in the flower. She 
swallowed the sweet liquid into her tiny 
honey-sac, and then flitted to another blos- 
som. 

When her sac, which held as much as a 
small drop, was full, she rose high above 
the marigolds and flew straight to the hive. 
Bees always take the quickest way through 
the air when they are headed for home; 
and that is why people call the shortest 
straightest path to anything a bee-line. 

When she reached the hive she crept in- 
side and went to empty her honey into one 



186 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

of the clean new wax cells near the edge 
of the comb. This fresh sweet juice, or 
nectar, is more watery than honey ought 
to be. So, while some of the bees keep 
bringing in nectar and pouring it into the 
cells, others work over it, fanning their 
wings to and fro just as the young nurses 
do to help warm the babies who are chang- 
ing in their sleep. The warmed air blows 
over the nectar and dries up part of the 
water. Then the bees squeeze from their 
heads a few drops of something that keeps 
the honey from spoiling. After that they 
cover each full cell with a thin curtain of 
wax to keep it safe for the winter. 

The next morning our little bee went 
out to gather pollen-dust for the nurses to 
mix with honey in making bee-bread for 
the babies. This time, instead of lapping 
up nectar, she tumbled about in the yellow 
center of a flower till the pollen grains 
stuck to the hairs on her legs and body. 
Then she rubbed the little stiff combs on 
her hind legs over her body and scraped 



THE BUSY LITTLE BEE 187 

off the pollen in two pasty balls. On the 
outside of each hind leg was a small hollow 
spot bordered with hairs. These were the 
baskets in which she carried the balls of 
pollen as she flew home. They were so 
heavy that they dragged her legs down. 
She had to flap her wings hard to travel 
with such a load. 

When in the hive again, she crawled to 
a cell near the nursery, and stood with her 
hind legs in it. She pushed off the balls 
of pollen with her middle legs, and other 
bees smoothed it down while she hurried 
out again to get more. On each journey 
she visited only one sort of flowers, so that 
the pollen in her baskets was all of the same 
kind. This was exactly what the flowers 
needed to help them to form good seeds, 
as you will learn when you study botany, 
but I cannot explain it to you now. 

After the young bee had worked a few 
days at gathering honey and collecting pol- 
len, she stayed in the hive one afternoon 
to make wax for new honeycombs. This 



188 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 



task really was hardest of all, though it 
looked easy enough. She climbed to the 
ceiling and hung there by the claws of her 

front legs. An- 
other bee crawled 
up and clung to 
her, and another 
caught hold of 
that one, and so on 
until there was a 
chain of bees 
hanging still in 
the dark. Others 
climbed up beside 
them and swung 
down other chains 
which tangled to- 
gether in a mass 
of little warm 
bodies. The 
longer they hung there, the warmer they 
grew. Our bee felt drowsy and numb, wait- 
ing and waiting, almost asleep. Tiny claws 
of her sisters clutched her hair and her legs. 




THE BUSY LITTLE BEE 189 

She could hardly breathe in the close-packed 
crowd. 

And slowly, slowly, while she clung there 
without moving, four specks of wax formed 
in the four tiny pockets on the under side 
of her body. It was almost as if she per- 
spired wax instead of salty water, as you 
do. 

Then, one by one, the bees crawled out 
of the mass and took the scales of wax 
from their pockets and chewed them soft. 
The first one stuck her bit of a lump to 
the roof. The next one added her speck 
and the next and the next did the same, till 
there was a little knob of wax hanging 
from above. 

After that, another bee climbed up to it 
and scooped out a small hole on one side, 
while others scooped out a hole on the op- 
posite side. The wax-makers kept bringing 
more wax and building it on to the comb; 
and the other workers kept digging new 
cells. At last a whole new comb hung there 
ready to be filled with honey. 



190 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 



IV. MOVING DAY 

Meanwhile, back in the dark nursery, the 
big queen bee went creeping from empty 
cell to cell, and laying an egg in each one. 
A number of working bees followed her 
everywhere, feeding her on the purest 
honey, cleaning and brushing her, and 
watching her night and day. If anything 
should happen to the queen there would be 
no more eggs and no more babies to grow 
up and help with the work of the hive. 

Now, of course, a queen bee cannot live 
forever, even if she may live four or five 
years. It was wise to have a young queen 
ready to take her place whenever she might 
die. Generally there was more than one lit- 
tle princess growing in the hive. It was 
the oddest thing ! When the bees wanted to 
have a new princess, they simply made a 
special big cell for one of the ordinary eggs. 
The baby who hatched from it was fed on 
bee- jelly all her life, instead of partly on 
bee-bread. And wonderful to think! Dur- 



THE BUSY LITTLE BEE 191 

ing her long sleep, instead of changing to 
a small worker with a tongue to suck honey 
from the flowers, with brushes on her feet, 
with pollen-baskets on her legs, and with 
wax-pockets on her body, she waked up a 
big queen who could do nothing except lay 
eggs. 

It chanced one day that a young princess 
was ready to gnaw her way out of her cell, 
while the old queen was still living. There 
is never room for two queens in one hive, 
so w T hat do you suppose they did? The old 
queen flew away with thousands of the 
workers to begin a new home. 

This was how it happened. The hive 
was getting more and more crowded every 
day as more young bees kept gnawing out 
of their cells. Our little bee could hardly 
push through her sisters who were creeping 
about the doorway. Her neck fairly ached 
from prodding those in front of her this 
w r ay and that. While she was busy empty- 
ing her baskets of pollen, the hurrying 
nurses bumped into her. When she brought 



192 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

in honey, the lazy drone bees, who never 
worked, jostled against her in their greedy 
haste to steal a mouthful. If she was busy 
cleaning the floor or plastering up cracks 
with gum from certain plants, she had to 
step aside every moment to let one or an- 
other pass. Whenever her task was to help 
keep the air fresh by standing near the door 
and clutching the floor with her claws while 
she beat her wings to and fro, somebody 
was always banging into her. It seemed 
as if she really did not have room to turn 
around except when she could escape into 
the wide spaces of the garden. 

One beautiful morning our little bee 
awoke as usual and crept toward the door 
in readiness to set forth to gather honey. 
But those who generally guarded the en- 
trance and greeted every passer with a wave 
of their feelers seemed to be excited over 
something. They were running to and fro 
nervously. Others were crawling in and 
out without bringing any burden from the 
flowers. Behind her in the hive thousands 



THE BUSY LITTLE BEE 193 

of bees began to suck honey from the open 
cells where it was stored. Each one took 
enough to last several days, for they would 
have no time to visit the garden when they 
were starting their new home. 

After a while some of them spread their 
wings and began to fly round and round 
inside the hive. The queen rushed from 
the nursery and dashed hither and thither 
as if she were crazy. Finally she ran 
through the doorway and, lifting her wings, 
flew upward. Pouring out after her came 
the throng of her followers. They flew 
with her, circling and drawing closer and 
closer in a swarm of vibrating little bodies 
and glistening gauzy wings. When the 
queen alighted on a tree and held quiet, the 
others came to rest around her and hung 
there, clinging to one another in a living 
cluster. 

Presently a few of the bees loosened their 
hold and started off to hunt for a hollow 
in a tree or wall where they could live, plas- 
tering up the cracks and hanging curtains 



194 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

of fresh honeycomb for a nursery and store 
rooms. 

Meanwhile back in the old hive our little 
bee found herself amid those who had 
stayed behind. Then indeed she had to 
work harder than ever in her life. Though 
the workers were so much fewer than be- 
fore, there were just as many babies wait- 
ing to be fed, just as many greedy drones 
eager to steal honey. A new queen was 
almost ready to begin to lay eggs. And 
besides all that, more honey must be gath- 
ered and stored for the winter that was 
coming. 

V. WAITING FOR SPRING 

As the days became cooler, the bees did 
not work so hard as during the summer 
weather. The queen laid fewer eggs. The 
babies slept more and ate less. There was 
no need to build new combs, for little honey 
could be found in the stray flowers that still 
bloomed in the garden. One morning, after 
a frosty night, our bee crawled slowly from 



THE BUSY LITTLE BEE 195 

the door and flew toward the marigold bed. 
The blossoms hung wilted and blackened 
on bent stems. After hovering over them 
a moment, she flitted back home. 

There was plenty of room inside now, 
even more than at the time when so many 
of her sisters had swarmed away following 
the old queen. Since then the drones had 
been driven out of the hive, and had died 
of cold and hunger. The workers knew 
that they would need all the honey in the 
combs to keep them alive through the win- 
ter. They had none to spare for feeding 
greedy drones who had never helped gather 
a grain of pollen or drop of nectar all sum- 
mer. 

Finally winter came in earnest. An icy 
wind rattled the bare branches of the trees. 
Snow sifted down over the shrivelled plants 
in the garden. It covered the earthworm's 
burrow, and lay deep and soft above the 
spot where grasshopper eggs were buried. 
Mosquito wigglers hid in the mud at the 
bottom of the pond in the meadow. Here 



196 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

and there in the sheltered crotch of a limb, 
or rolled within a doubled-up leaf, the co- 
coons of different kinds of butterflies hung 
waiting for spring. In the house a few 
flies crept behind the pictures or slipped 
into a crack till the warm weather should 
make them feel like coming out to go again 
a-buzzing. Spiders slept in their holes or 
curled up in the middle of thick webs. The 
ants moved about dully in their under- 
ground houses. Within the hive the bees 
clung together in a great cluster around 
a comb full of honey. 

Our little bee happened to be next to 
the honey. When she was hungry she 
sipped a drop and then passed on a mouth- 
ful or two to those behind her. From one 
to another the sweet food travelled till all 
were fed. When that comb was empty, 
they moved to the next, crawling over each 
other. Sometimes our bee was snug in the 
center, with the many wings around her 
slowly beating to and fro to keep the air 
warm. Sometimes she found herself swing- 



THE BUSY LITTLE BEE 197 

ing in the outermost row. When too chilly 
there, she pushed and scrambled farther 
into the close crowded mass. 

Slowly the winter hours dragged on and 
on and on. Drowsy, barely stirring, half 
alive, the bees clung together, waiting for 
spring to bring the flowers in the beautiful 
garden. 



IX 
HOP - FLOP, THE TOAD 



IX 

HOP - FLOP, THE TOAD 

I. POLLYWOG BEGINS TO GROW 

NOW the toad that sat blinking in 
his burrow under a stone all day 
had lived in the garden much 
longer than any of the other wonderful 
little creatures. Since he had first come 
hopping in at the gate, years before, he had 
watched many generations of summer in- 
sects come and go. Grasshopper Green's 
father and grandfather and great-grand- 
father and great-great-grandfather for a 
dozen seasons back had leaped hither and 
thither and swung on the grasses just out 
of his reach. Alas for those who had care- 
lessly soared through the air to land just 
within his reach! He had gobbled them 
up quick! 



202 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

During this particular summer when 
Grasshopper Green dwelt there, a new toad 
appeared in the garden. He had jour- 
neyed from the same pond where Madam 
Mosquito lived while she was a wiggler 
baby. He himself had been only a little 
black pollywog at first. This is the story 
of how he turned into a toad. 

He began to wiggle even before he 
hatched out of the egg. The toad eggs 
looked like a row of dark dots in a long 
curling string of clear jelly that lay twisted 
about a water weed at the edge of the 
pond. There were thousands of eggs in 
this one string. Now for a week or more 
each had been slowly changing to a polly- 
wog baby. 

It was very interesting. First the round 
dot lengthened to an oval while the specks 
of living matter within began to form the 
outside and the inside of the tiny new crea- 
ture. A few days later the shape of the 
soft little changing body showed a head 
at one end and a tail at the other. Now 



HOP-FLOP, THE TOAD 203 

and then the bit of a baby squirmed, doub- 
ling up till his head and tail touched; then 
flap, he jerked them apart. He was grow- 
ing too big and lively to stay coiled in the 

egg- 

The next day he doubled up and jerked 
apart more often. Every time he did it, 
he seemed to grow stronger and wiggled 
harder, just as if exercise was doing his 
muscles good. Finally he managed to give 
such a vigorous twist and convulsive flap 
that he broke loose and went sliding and 
squirming through the stiff sticky jelly to 
the smooth water of the pond. 

At first he was so tired that he dropped 
to the bottom and lay flat on the mud till 
he was rested. Then he flapped his tail, 
and away he swam, wiggling hither and 
thither. This was better than being shut 
up in the sticky jelly. The cool water 
lapped softly over his body and waved the 
gill fringes on his neck. With these gills 
he breathed the air that was in the water, 
for he did not yet have any lungs. 



204 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

He had no eyes at this time to see where 
he was going, as he paddled this way and 
that. Presently he bumped against a weed, 
and in an instant the suckers on the front 
of his head reached out and glued them- 
selves fast. There he hung clinging to the 
stem and flapping his slender finned tail 
now and then. Really this was about all 
that he could do at his age, for he had as 
yet no mouth for eating. The food that 
he had lived on while still in the egg kept 
him alive now. 

By and by, as he floated there, waiting 
for his mouth to grow, another tadpole 
brushed against him, and another round 
head pressed close to his on the weed. Then 
another came and another till more than a 
dozen little fellows hung in a cluster with 
their heads together and their tails wig- 
gling. Sometimes they pushed so hard 
that one or two lost their hold and slid out 
of the crowd. After circling off a short 
distance they came paddling back and 



HOP-FLOP, THE TOAD 205 

squirmed in till they could glue their suck- 
ers fast to the weed again. 

Meanwhile, as the days passed, each little 
tail was growing longer, and each little 
body was growing larger around. A flap 
of skin from the head stretched down over 
the neck and covered the gills except for 
one small hole on the left side. After his 
neck was hidden in this way, he looked as 
if he were all head and tail. The name of 
tadpole is made of two words: tad or toad, 
and poll, or head. It means a toad that 
seems to be all head. The name of polly- 
wog means a little head with a wiggle at 
one end. 

And then, ah, the new little mouth that 
was opening wider every day! The suckers 
grew smaller and smaller till pollywog 
could no longer cling to a weed with them. 
By this time his mouth was big enough to 
use. He started off by himself to find 
something to eat. As he wiggled away, 
with his lips opening and shutting, water 
flowed in through his mouth and through 



206 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

his two tiny nostrils. It passed over his 
covered gills and then poured out at the 
hole at his left side. That was how he 
breathed at this age. 

But the eating! Um-m, that was the 
best fun yet! It was better than breathing, 
it was better even than wiggling. Though 
his mouth was small, it had horny lips that 
could scrape up tiny green plants or bite 
off the tender tips of larger weeds. Now 
he had something to do that was worth 
while. 

II. POLLYWOG CHANGES INTO A TOAD 

One day when pollywog was darting to 
and fro near the slimy bottom of the pond, 
stopping now and then to suck up a mouth- 
ful of the delicious green, suddenly from a 
dark cave beneath a sunken stick rushed 
a dreadful creature with terrible jaws wide 
open. Pollywog, with a wild flap, flap, 
darted upward just in time, but alas, a 
beetle that moment came diving down from 
above, and made a dash to catch him. Her 



HOP-FLOP, THE TOAD 207 

sharp pincers gripped bis tail and tore 
away part of its soft flesh. 

Poor pollywog paddled away as fast as he 
could and stayed hidden in a nook among 
some lily roots till his tail had grown again. 
The class of backboned animals to which 
toads belong are called Batrachians or Am- 
phibians. Like fishes they live in water 
when they are young, and on land like rep- 
tiles when they are grown up. Many Am- 
phibians have the power of getting new 
tails if they lose their old ones. Some of 
them can replace injured legs also. The 
younger a tadpole is when he happens to 
get hurt, the more quickly he can get cured 
and go wiggling away as strong and lively 
as ever. 

Even with such advantages, the pond 
was a dangerous place for juicy pollywogs. 
Bugs chased them, turtles snapped at them, 
fish gobbled them down, and birds swooped 
to catch them when they swam to the top 
of the water to rest in the sunshine. Doubt- 
less, if our little fellow had not had so many 



208 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

thousands of brothers and sisters and cous- 
ins, he would have been eaten himself long 
ago. As it was, he managed to escape 
every time a new peril — or an old one 
either, for that matter — sent the myriads 
of little black bodies darting wildly in every 
direction. 

Perhaps if he had been able to think at 
all, he might have wondered how he could 
ever get away from that uneasy life and 
find a quiet home where he could be safe 
from one minute to the next. It was sad 
never even to eat a meal in peace. But 
now at last happier days were coming fast, 
for pollywog was changing into a toad. 

The first sign of the change appeared 
when two small bumps began to grow at 
the base of his tail. Very likely he did not 
notice them for several days. Then one 
morning, when he was swimming in and 
out amid the water grasses, something 
caught and jerked him back just at the 
narrowest place. His new hind legs had 
grown out so long that the toes of one 



HOP-FLOP, THE TOAD 209 

had hooked around a stem in passing. He 
kicked loose and wiggled on to hunt for 
a breakfast of tender green slime. He had 
no time to be surprised at any change in 
his wonderful little body. 

Indeed every day found him different 
from the day before. His eyes had ap- 
peared and kept growing bigger and 
seemed higher on his head. Almost every 
time he opened his mouth to take a bite 
of food or a swallow of water, his jaws 
stretched a bit farther apart. They 
stretched and stretched till finally the cor- 
ners of his mouth were away around under 
his eyes. 

While his hind legs grew longer, his fore 
legs or arms were forming beneath the skin 
that covered his neck. When they were 
ready to be used, the left hand came poking 
through the breathing pore on that side 
and the right hand pushed a hole through 
the skin on the other side. Of course, with 
his left arm blocking up the breathing pore, 
the water flowing over his gills could not 



210 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

get out there. It had to flow back by the 
same way it came in, through his mouth. 
Naturally his mouth was kept busy open- 
ing and shutting. Breathing was hard 
work for him at this time, when his gills 
were becoming smaller and his new lungs 
were not yet ready for air. He must have 
been glad enough a few days later when 
he was still more changed and was able to 
keep his mouth closed while he breathed 
real air through his nostrils and swallowed 
it into his finished lungs. 

Even now he was not entirely grown 
up, for he still had a tail; and toads do 
not need tails when they are ready to leave 
the water and go to live on land. The way 
that tail disappeared was the oddest thing! 
Instead of growing larger every day, as 
all the rest of his body was doing, it began 
to shorten slowly hour after hour. One 
reason for this was because pollywog 
stopped using it. 

You remember that when he was younger 
he swam by wiggling his tail. After his 



HOP-FLOP, THE TOAD 



211 



hind legs sprouted out and grew long, with 
five webbed toes on each broad foot, he 
learned to swim by kicking. The more he 
used his legs, the shorter grew his tail. 




And, of course, just exactly as fast as his 
tail kept getting shorter, just so much more 
he was obliged to depend upon his legs. 

At this time pollywog seemed to like to 
stay near the top of the pond. He needed 
air to fill his new lungs every few moments. 



212 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

To be sure, if he chose, he could paddle 
around near the slimy bottom or go nosing 
among the lily roots till he really had to 
have a fresh bubble of air. Then he could 
rush swiftly to the surface to get it. But 
possibly swimming with legs was harder 
work than wiggling a light finned tail. At 
any rate, the young toad was becoming 
more and more tired of living under water. 

III. GOOD-BY TO THE POND 

One morning pollywog was floating at 
the surface of the pond, with his arms rest- 
ing on a grass stem. For several days he 
had not enjoyed eating very much. The 
specks of weeds and tender green scum did 
not taste so good now as they had tasted 
while he was a baby. His stomach had 
changed as well as his mouth and lungs 
and legs and all the rest of him. The last 
stump of his tail had vanished. He had 
turned from a tadpole into a toad. 

While he waited with his bright eyes 
shining between the narrow slits of his half 



HOP-FLOP, THE TOAD 213 

shut lids, he looked almost asleep. But 
indeed he was quite wide awake enough to 
see a tiny spider come running along the 
grass stem. When it reached a spot near 
his nose, presto! His mouth opened, his 
tongue darted out, and the tiny spider was 
gone. 

Ah, that was the kind of food he wanted 
now. No more tasteless slimy weeds for 
him! He would go hunting for lively 
juicy morsels to send sliding down his 
throat in one blissful gulp after another. 
This delicious mouthful had appeared scam- 
pering toward him from the direction of 
the land. Very well, he would immediately 
start out to catch another. He scrambled 
upon the grass, drew up his hind legs as 
if he were about to swim, kicked them out 
suddenly, and away he shot through the 
air with a hop and alighted on the shore 
with a bump and a flop. He was no longer 
a wiggling little pollywog; he was Hop- 
Flop, the toad. 

For the first few days he stayed near the 



214 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

water. Sometimes he rested in the sun- 
shine, with the soft mud oozing between 
the four slender fingers of each hand and 
welling up over the tips of the five Webbed 
toes on each foot. Sometimes he hopped 
back into the pond and swam about with 
the cool water lapping his body and soak- 
ing in through his skin. Whenever he was 
thirsty, it was not necessary for him to 
drink by swallowing. All he had to do 
was to lie down in some pool or moist spot 
where his skin could be kept wet. 

By and by, as he grew stronger and more 
accustomed to living on land, he went hunt- 
ing among the grasses farther away from 
the shore. One day the wee black fellow, 
no bigger than a cricket, was hopping after 
an ant which ran swiftly over a patch of 
dry ground. Little Hop-Flop did not no- 
tice that he was leaving the pond far be- 
hind. After he had caught the ant, he sat 
resting with his legs doubled under him. 
His bright eyes could watch a green 
meadow grasshopper swinging on a reed 



HOP-FLOP, THE TOAD 215 

above him. A red lady bug was crawling 
slowly along a stalk. A small caterpillar 
had dropped from a leaf, and was twisting 
and doubling at the end of its silken thread 
over the young toad's head. 

While Hop-Flop waited for the cater- 
pillar to spin down within reach of his 
nimble tongue, he heard now and then a 
faint splash from the pond behind him. 
The wind rustled softly in the grasses and 
the rollicking carol of a bobolink rang out 
above the hum of several bees who were 
settling down over the blossoms of a wild 
grape vine. 

The toad could hear well with his two 
round ear spots just back of his eyes, but 
he seemed to pay no attention to the noises 
of the pleasant spring world around him 
till suddenly a new sound startled him. It 
was a snap of a dead twig. Little Hop- 
Flop lifted himself on his hind feet, ready 
to jump. He listened again. Something 
was writhing toward him over the mat of 
tangled roots and fallen grass blades. He 



216 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

did not wait to see a pointed head come 
peering slyly between the stems, with its 
hungry mouth ready to dart out a forked 
tongue. Though he had never met a snake 
in all his life, he felt somehow that danger 
was near. So off he went, hopping as fast 
as he could. 

He was so eager to escape somewhere or 
anywhere away from that dreadful, sliding, 
creeping sound, that he leaped again and 
again without looking ahead. More than 
once he bumped in mid air against a clump 
of tough stalks, and down he tumbled with 
his paws sprawling. By the time he had 
travelled far enough to feel safe, he was 
so hot and tired that he hurried to crawl 
beneath a leaf and rest till evening. 

He learned that it was much more com- 
fortable to stay hidden in a shady spot 
during the day, and to go out to hunt after 
darkness brought the damp cool air that 
was so pleasant to his delicate skin. Cold- 
blooded animals, such as toads and others, 
have no heat in their own bodies, as warm- 



HOP-FLOP, THE TOAD 217 

blooded animals have. They are always 
just as cold or just as warm as the air 
around them. 

After a week or so of hunting at night 
and resting in the daytime, the little toad 
found himself at the edge of the meadow. 
Before him stretched a road so dry that he 
almost choked when he landed in it with 
a plop that sent the dust sifting over him. 
In a jiffy he leaped back to the shady path 
and huddled down in the coolest hole under 
the biggest stone within reach. 

But even the coolest hole there was too 
dry for comfort. When the sun beat hot 
on the stone, and each passing footstep 
started the dust whirling into every cranny, 
poor little Hop-Flop felt so feverish and 
sick that he did not even try to snap up a 
beetle that was crawling near. He was 
thirsty all over. If he could not get water 
soon, he would surely die. 

Then what joy it was to him when clouds 
rolled up over the sun and rain began to 
fall with a soft spattering sound on top of 



218 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

the stone and in the dust of the road! He 
crawled out of his cave in a frantic hurry 
to feel the big drops splash on his eager 
thirsty little body. Then away he went, 
hopping happily across the road, along a 
path past the house where the untidy fam- 
ily lived, and on and on till he arrived at 
the stone wall that surrounded the beautiful 
garden. Hop, hop, hop, he travelled be- 
side it, till he reached the gate. In a mo- 
ment he had squeezed beneath it and went 
hopping over the dewy lawn. 

IV. GOOD TIMES IN THE GARDEN 

It was so late when Hop-Flop entered 
the garden that he slipped beneath the first 
clump of peonies in his path and cuddled 
down to rest. All the next day he stayed 
hidden in his shady nook, only moving now 
and then to snap up a spider or an ant that 
went running past. Toward sunset he 
crept out to go hunting. He needed four 
good meals a day if he was to be happy 
and healthy and strong. 



HOP-FLOP, THE TOAD 219 

There was plenty for him to eat in the 
garden. Gnats were dancing in the long 
level sun-rays that stretched between the 
shadows of the trees, but he could not catch 
them because they were high above his most 
nimble hop. Humming-bird moths were 
hovering over the bed of four-o'clocks, but 
though he saw them he did not waste a 
minute in watching them, doubtless because 
they were far too big for him to eat at his 
age and size. Near a lilac bush he man- 
aged to snap up two or three mosquitoes 
which flitted too near him. While hopping 
along under the grape arbor, he swallowed 
a soft black slug, and jumped after a small 
green measuring worm that was swinging 
down on its silken thread from a vine leaf. 

When at last he reached the place where 
the vegetables grew, ah, that was the best 
hunting ground of all! All sorts of worms 
and bugs and beetles and caterpillars lived 
there where the tender juicy plants were 
sprouting in the rich soil. Certainly there 
are so many little creatures devouring roots 



220 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

and leaves and buds that few plants would 
be left alive if it were not for the spiders 
and toads and birds that catch and eat the 
greedy insects. 

Hop-Flop ate and ate till he could eat 
no longer. He was almost stuffed too full 
to move when he saw a firefly alight on 
a leaf of lettuce and crept toward it cau- 
tiously. As soon as he was near enough, 
he opened his mouth and darted out his 
tongue. It was a convenient kind of tongue 
for such hunting, because it was fastened 
in the front of his mouth, with the tip lying 
back toward his throat. When he swung 
it outward, it could stretch its whole length 
from the edge of his lip, instead of wasting 
part in reaching from the back to the front 
of the mouth, as our tongues do. His 
tongue was so sticky that no insect could 
get away if once it was touched. It was 
fun to hunt fireflies, though after all noth- 
ing tasted very good when a fellow was 
not hungry. 

Soon afterward he hopped slowly toward 



HOP-FLOP, THE TOAD 221 

the summerhouse and slid in beneath the 
vines at one corner. He was beginning to 
feel very uncomfortable, as if his skin was 
too tight for him, as indeed it was. Such 
good food as he had found that night made 
him grow fast. The very next day, while 
he sat in his cool nook with his back humped 
up, his head bent down, and his legs drawn 
under him, his skin split along his back 
and over his arms. Then he began to swell 
out his body so as to push the loose skin 
toward his mouth, where it was sucked in 
little by little. When it was all inside, he 
swallowed hard, opening and shutting his 
mouth and closing his ej r es. This winking 
helped to force the lump of skin down his 
throat, because his eyes in closing were low- 
ered just as far into his mouth as they 
rounded up above his head when open. 

After he had moulted, the young toad 
felt much better. He was hungry again, 
probably because his new skin allowed him 
more room for food. He could hardly wait 
for evening before he started out afresh, 



222 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

bright-eyed and lively, in search of his sup- 
per. 

This time Hop-Flop happened to meet 
the old toad who had lived in the garden 
for many years. He was catching cater- 
pillars on the currant bushes, and did not 
pay much attention to the new comer who 
went hopping along and stopped in 
friendly fashion to take a mouthful or two. 
There were plenty for both. Old toads 
never eat young ones, as many other Ba- 
trachians do. 

All summer long little Hop-Flop lived 
in the garden, and grew so fast that he 
shed his skin every few weeks. When the 
cold days of autumn nipped the plants, 
killed the delicate insects, or drove them 
into their snug winter nests, the young toad 
dug his burrow beneath the stone wall. In 
digging a burrow, he simply shovelled out 
a hole by kicking the soil to this side and 
that with his hind feet, and backing in till 
he was fully under shelter. 

During the summer days he sat quiet all 



HOP-FLOP, THE TOAD 223 

day with his head resting in the doorway. 
But now, for his long winter home, he 
closed his door by backing in farther and 
farther till the earth caved down in front. 
There he was shut cosily into his little house. 
Through the cold months he slept on 
without moving till spring brought the bud- 
ding leaves and wakened all the small, flit- 
ting, creeping, squirming, hopping, live 
creatures that lived in the garden. Down 
in his dark burrow the young toad stirred 
and stretched his legs and came pushing out 
to the pleasant air, his eyes eager, his throat 
quivering as he swallowed long breaths of 
fresh air. He was still a little fellow, for 
it would take him several years yet to grow 
up. And then some lovely April morning 
he would go hopping back to the pond from 
whence he had come. There he would 
plunge joyously into the cool water, and 
swimming out among the lily leaves he 
would lift his head, swell out his throat, 
and join the chorus of his brothers piping 
forth their sweet shrill song of spring. 



ROBIN BRIGHT EYES 



X 

ROBIN BRIGHT EYES 

I. IN THE TREE-TOP 

HIGH up in a nest in the apple 
tree three baby robins lay cuddled 
down together, each with his head 
stretched out over another's warm throb- 
bing body. They were so very young that 
their eyes were not yet opened, and not a 
single feather had even begun to sprout 
in their smooth skins. They slept, breath- 
ing quietly through their specks of nostrils, 
while each tiny heart beat fast within their 
heaving little breasts. 

Flecks of sunshine and leaf shadows flick- 
ered over them, and small green apples 
danced at the ends of the twigs as a breeze 
swayed the branches. A fly alighted on 



228 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

a leaf above and rested there, combing his 
glistening wings with his feet. A furry- 
spider walked cautiously around the nest, 
while a red ant scrambled up its rough wall 
of woven sticks and straws and paused on 
the edge a moment, as if looking down 
upon the babies, before she hurried away. 

A minute later there was a rustle of swift 
wings, and the mother robin came flying 
home with a worm in her bill. The instant 
that she touched the branch on which the 
nest was fastened, up popped the three 
blind heads with the yellow mouths wide 
open. Each one reached up as high as he 
could, sprawling out his feet to brace him- 
self, and propping his skinny wings against 
his brothers as he jostled and pushed with 
all his little strength. 

The eldest baby, who had hatched out 
first, could reach the highest because he had 
the longest neck. It was into his throat 
that the mother bird thrust the smooth fat 
worm. As soon as he felt it sliding down, 
he swallowed it with a gulp and opened 



/**= 



yp^- 




k THE MOTHER ROBIN CAME FLYING HOME WITH A WORM IN HER BILL.' 

[Page 228 



ROBIN BRIGHT EYES 231 

his mouth for more. He never thought 
of waiting quietly till the others were fed 
in their turn. He was only a bird, you 
know, and then besides he was so very 
young that he had not yet learned to think 
about anybody but himself. When he 
should grow up and have babies of his own, 
he would grow brave and kind and un- 
selfish in taking care of them. 

However, even at this greedy age, though 
he kept his mouth open and peeped as 
loudly as he could, he did not get more 
than his share of food. A minute after the 
mother robin flew away to hunt for some- 
thing else, the father robin alighted beside 
the nest with three worms in his bill. 

No sooner had he pushed one down each 
of the three gaping throats, than back 
darted the mother with a caterpillar and 
a fat cricket. She gave the caterpillar to 
her eldest son, and then in glancing around 
as her mate flitted off, she forgot which 
baby had just been fed. Finding all three 
mouths equally wide open, she poked the 



232 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

cricket into the nearest one and waited to 
see it swallowed. But would you believe 
it? Though he tried and tried, that greedy 
youngster could not swallow the cricket, 
because the caterpillar was still in his throat 
on the way to his stomach. From that the 
mother knew that he had been the last child 
fed, so she snatched out the cricket and 
passed it to one of the other babies. 

You may imagine how busy the parent 
birds were all day long with three such 
eager little mouths always calling for some- 
thing to eat. The older the little ones grew, 
the more food they needed, and the louder 
they could cry for it. The old robins had 
hardly a minute to spare for preening their 
feathers and wiping their bills. Every time 
one of them came back from hunting for 
worms and insects, he or she cleaned the 
nest before starting out again. 

On the warmest days the mother spread 
her wings over the children to shield them 
from the heat, while the father attended 
to the hunting. Whenever he returned 



ROBIN BRIGHT EYES 233 

with food, she stepped aside till he had put 
it into the eager mouths. Sometimes she 
flew away to catch a bite herself, and then 
hurried back to settle down over her brood 
again. 

On the morning that the eldest baby first 
noticed that his eyes were opening, he was 
nestled beneath his mother's soft breast. 
In the darkness he did not know how the 
tiny slit between his eyelids was slowly 
widening till she lifted herself higher and 
fluffed out her feathers for coolness. Then 
suddenly he saw! He could see the light. 
The world was something more than a 
grass-lined nest with two other soft small 
bodies pressing against his, and a downy 
breast covering them. To be alive meant 
something more than to jostle and scramble 
and stretch up his neck high and open his 
mouth wide and feel a delicious lump sli- 
ding down his throat. To be alive in the 
world meant something more even than his 
mother's soothing voice and his father's 
cheery song ringing from the tree top over 



234 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

the murmuring hum and rustle of the gar- 
den. It meant a million wonderful things 
to see with his two wonderful eyes. 

And what do you imagine was the first 
thing he really saw when his mother hopped 
to one side? It was his father standing 
with one foot on the edge of the nest, while 
hanging from the corners of his bill were 
three gleaming beautiful red cherries. 

Instantly the little fellow's yellow mouth 
popped so wide open that his eyes were 
squeezed shut. One of the cherries with 
its pit squeezed out dropped into his throat, 
and gulp! it was swallowed. Then he un- 
closed his eyes and looked at his father, 
who was gazing down with his head cocked 
on one side, and not a single cherry left 
in his bill. That baby bird was so disap- 
pointed that he cried as loudly as he could, 
"Peep, peep, peep!" This meant, "I 
want more! I want more!" He just 
loved cherries to eat, and now that he could 
see, very likely he liked the looks of them, 
too. 



ROBIN BRIGHT EYES 235 



II. HOW HE HOPPED AND FLAPPED 

Not long after this happy day, Robin 
Bright Eyes felt his feathers begin to grow. 
Or possibly it would be more exact to say 
that he felt his brothers' feathers begin to 
grow, because the new pointed quills on the 
edges of their wings pressed against his 
soft body as the three lay nestled close to- 
gether. Each quill came sprouting from a 
tiny hole in the skin and kept growing 
longer while a plumy fringe unfolded from 
the tip. Even if the babies had not been 
growing so fast, these feathers would have 
helped to fill up the nest. Now, what with 
the young bodies getting bigger from hour 
to hour, what with the new coats thicken- 
ing, what with the small feet scrambling, 
the eager necks stretching, and the strength- 
ened wings flapping in livelier fashion 
every day, no wonder they nearly spilled 
over the woven rim of their round little 
cradle in the tree-top. 

One warm afternoon, while the father 



236 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

robin was hunting for wild strawberries be- 
yond the meadow and the mother robin was 
digging for grubs in the lettuce bed, the 
young ones were dozing with their heads 
hanging over the edge of the nest. By 
and by, bounce! How the limb teetered 
and tossed! At the first quiver the three 
birds were wide awake in an instant and 
began to open their mouths and flap their 
wings and jostle and peep, for naturally 
they thought that their father or mother 
had alighted on the branch with a billful 
of dinner for them. 

So they called and waited with their 
mouths all ready, and soon with a tap, tap, 
tap, the visitor went hopping along the 
branch toward the nest. Then each baby 
flapped more eagerly and cried more loudly 
than ever, "Peep, peep, peep! Give it to 
me. I'm the hungriest! I'm the hungri- 
est!" But not a morsel dropped into a 
single throat. And when at last Bright 
Eyes shut his bill long enough to get a 
good look upward, what do you suppose 



ROBIN BRIGHT EYES 237 

he saw? Instead of the brownish red breast 
and gentle loving face of one of his parents, 
he saw a big gray bird gazing down at him 
with fierce eyes shining and hooked beak 
half open. 

Just as the babies had huddled down 
together as small as they could crowd, there 
was a whirr of wings and with a loud cry 
of anger the father robin dashed furiously 
at the stranger's head and pecked and 
clawed at him till he was glad enough to 
fly away. Then the brave bird hopped 
quickly to the nest to see if his children 
were safe. 

A minute later the mother came hurry- 
ing home, having been alarmed by the 
sounds of the battle. Very much excited, 
her mate told her all about it, chattering 
and jerking his tail. No sooner had she 
heard it than she stepped into the nest and, 
tucking her babies under her wings, she 
told him that he must go and attend to 
getting them something to eat, but as for 
her, she mean to stay right there and take 



238 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

care of them every minute while enemies 
were near. 

The young birds were so frightened that 
they cuddled down as still as three little 
balls of feathers till a few minutes later 
they felt the limb bounce again. Instantly 
they forgot about the terrible stranger. 
They began to scramble around and flap 
their wings and poke their heads out from 
beneath their mother's feathers. She tried 
to hold them under her, but they were such 
big babies by this time that they fairly 
tipped her over when they all stood up and 
stretched their necks this way and that. 
The best she could do then was to hop to 
one side and wait till they had eaten the 
caterpillars which their father had brought 
them. 

Perhaps Bright Eyes decided that it was 
about time he learned to fly, so that he 
would be able to get away from the next 
danger that might come threatening. At 
any rate, the next morning, as soon as the 
parents had gone out to hunt, this eldest 



ROBIN BRIGHT EYES 239 

youngster started to climb up to the rim 
of the nest. The inside of the nest was 
made of smooth clay lined with soft grasses. 
When he tried to crawl up this rounded 
wall, he kept slipping back. Then he lifted 
one foot as high as he could, and tried to 
clutch one of the twigs that was woven 
around in the rim. But though he stretched 
and flapped his wings, he could not reach 
it till he had scrambled upon his youngest 
brother's back. 

That gave him such a good start that 
he easily clasped the twig with his four 
toes, hooking three of them in front and 
one behind. But the moment he lifted his 
other foot to take a step upward, the first 
one lost its hold, for his claws were not yet 
very strong, and down he flopped to the 
bottom of the nest again. After a minute's 
rest he set to work afresh, spreading his 
wings and making little hops up against 
the side of the nest. He was so tired by 
the time the mother robin came back with 
a fat grub that he was the last one to 



240 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

stretch up his open mouth, and so he re- 
ceived only the smallest bite. 

Perhaps his brothers thought that he had 
been foolish to waste his strength for noth- 
ing. But indeed they were mistaken. That 
hopping and flapping and scrambling of 
his had not been really wasted, though, to 
be sure, he had not succeeded in climbing 
to the rim that day. Still, the exercise 
helped to make his wings and legs stronger 
than those of the other lazier young birds, 
so that he was the first of the three to learn 
to fly. 

III. HOW HE FLEW 

Very early one summer morning Bright 
Eyes woke up, feeling that something 
pleasant was going to happen that day. 
High on the tree-top the father robin was 
singing, " Cheer up! Cheer up! Cheery, 
be cheery! Cheer up! Cheer up! Cheery, 
be cheery! " 

Bright Eyes listened with his two tiny 
ear-holes which were hidden under the 



ROBIN BRIGHT EYES 241 

feathers back of his eyes. Before he had 
heard the song sung through three times, 
he grew so cheery himself that he stood up 
as tall as he could on his little legs and 
tried to flap his wings right there beneath 
his mother's breast. When she felt him 
stirring in such lively fashion, she hopped 
off the nest and began to preen her feath- 
ers, pecking at her oil bag above her tail 
and then drawing her bill along every quill. 

Meanwhile Bright Eyes was trying 
harder than ever to climb out of the cradle. 
He had been living in that old nest for 
eleven days, and he was tired of it. So he 
hopped and flapped, and flapped and 
hopped, too busy even to peep, though his 
brothers were calling for their breakfast 
every moment. 

Their hungry cries reminded the father 
robin that there was no time to waste in 
mere singing now that he had a family to 
feed. So down he flew to the lawn and 
dragged a plump earth-worm from its bur- 
row. As soon as he reached home and saw 



242 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

his eldest son hopping and flapping so in- 
dustriously, it seemed almost as if he laughed 
with joy. Instead of dropping the worm 
into either of the two wide open mouths 
that were waiting for it, he shook it above 
the little bobbing head. Of course Bright 
Eyes tried to snatch it when he saw it so 
near, but the higher he jumped, the farther 
away that wise old robin held the morsel. 
By dangling it just beyond reach, he was 
coaxing the young bird from the nest. 

Bright Eyes was so much interested in 
following the worm that he forgot to be 
afraid of falling. By trying over and over 
again, he at last managed to flap at the 
very instant that he hopped. With his 
wings helping his legs thus in the nick of 
time, he found himself higher up the side 
than ever before. He clutched a twig with 
one foot, then with the other, and there he 
was perched on the rim of the nest. And 
more delightful still, that fat juicy worm 
was sliding down his throat. 

After resting, and eating a few more 



ROBIN BRIGHT EYES 243 

worms and a cricket and two cherries, he 
was ready to hop along the branch after 
his father. It was a strange world to him 
there in the apple tree, with rustling leaves 
around him, and nothing but his own small 
claws to keep him from falling down, down, 
down, to the green grass far below. He 
held on tight all day, sitting with his head 
down and his bill sticking up. He dared 
not let go, though the old robins fluttered 
and scolded and coaxed. They wanted him 
to spread his wings and fly, but he was 
afraid. 

By and by an ant ran past him on the 
branch, and he pecked at it, but he only 
nipped a bit of bark, for he could not aim 
very well yet with his bill. However, this 
reminded him that he was hungry, and he 
began to call for his supper. It must have 
surprised him very much when his father 
did not bring him any food. He peeped 
more sharply and jerked his body as if he 
was angry. His mother, who was taking 
care of his brothers in the nest, clucked to 



244 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

her mate, and he hurried away to the cur- 
rant bushes. In a few minutes he was back 
with a June-bug. 

Instead of dropping it at once into the 
little wide open mouth that awaited him, 
he held it half an inch away. Bright Eyes 
stretched forward to snap at it. He leaned 
out so far that he lost his balance. As his 
small claws loosened their clasp, he spread 
his wings and went fluttering down toward 
the grass. 

He landed with a little bump, and sat 
there, breathing quickly. He was aston- 
ished at himself. Why, flying was as easy 
as anything! All a fellow had to do was 
to spread his wings and beat them against 
the air. Of course he could not fly so well 
as his father just yet, because his wing 
feathers were not so long and strong, and 
his tail was too short to be much good as 
a rudder. But just wait and watch him 
after he had practised a while! 

The father robin brought him the June- 
bug, and then picked the ripest reddest 



ROBIN BRIGHT EYES 245 

cherry that he could find for his good little 
son. After that, he coaxed the youngster 
to hop from twig to twig of the grape vine 
near by, till he could reach a safe perch 
for the night. 

IV. HOW HE LEARNED TO HUNT AND TO 

SING 

He was so tired that he slept soundly, 
snuggled close to the trellis where the grape 
vine twined around it thickly. Very early 
the next morning he awoke at the first 
chirp of bird voices in the garden. For- 
getting where he was, he opened his mouth 
half in a yawn, half in a low peep for 
breakfast, and swayed to one side as if seek- 
ing to cuddle against his brothers. Instead 
of touching the small soft bodies that had 
been near him all his life till now, he felt 
nothing but air. Half asleep, he tottered, 
lost his balance again, and went fluttering 
downward as before. 

Chir-a-whir, chir-a-whir! Father robin 
came hurrying to the rescue. Bright Eyes 



246 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

sat up, blinking dizzily. The moment he 
caught sight of the old bird, he called for 
something to eat. Well, of course, that 
showed that he had not been hurt much by 
his fall. His father said, 

" Cluck, cluck, cluck; come along, come 
along! I will show you how to hunt for 
your own breakfast." And away they both 
went hopping to the lawn. 

Across the dewy grass hopped Bright 
Eyes. The father robin halted and cocked 
his head on one side as if to listen. Then 
he ran forward a dozen quick steps, stopped 
suddenly, turned, and pecked at the ground. 
Bits of grass and earth were tossed up by 
the swift scratching of his bill. Ah, he had 
found it! A fat white grub lay curled 
among the rootlets. Snapping it up, he 
held it for his son to see. 

"Peep, peep, peep!" cried Bright Eyes. 
" Give it to me! Give it to me!" You see, 
he did not think of hunting himself, for he 
had never done it in all his life. Perhaps 
he supposed that his parents would always 



ROBIN BRIGHT EYES 247 

take care of him and drop juicy morsels 
down his throat, while all he had to do was 
to follow them around and be on hand for 
meals. 

However he soon learned better. After 
eating this first grub, he kept near while 
he watched his father dig up another. 
Then he hopped closer, opened his mouth, 
and waited for the delicious bite. But 
what do you suppose! That wise old bird 
gobbled it down himself. Perhaps he knew 
that the only way to teach his lazy child 
to work for a living was to let him go 
hungry for a time. 

Indeed not many minutes passed before 
Bright Eyes was hunting on his own ac- 
count. At first his father showed him 
where to peck, but soon he learned how 
to listen for the faint gnawings and squirm- 
ings amid the roots, and how to use his keen 
sight in searching for the worm holes 
among the grasses. He learned to dash 
after a quick leaping cricket or grasshop- 
per, and to swoop down upon a scurrying 



248 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 



ant or spider. He learned how to pick the 
ripest cherries, suck off the juicy pulp, and 
drop the hard pit without swallowing it. 
Ah, this was a joyous world for a young 








robin in June ! And then one morning, hid- 
den in the thickest part of the apple tree, 
he learned how to sing. First, loud and 
clear, rang out the old bird's song of 
" Cheer up, cheer up! Cheery, be cheery! " 
Then Bright Eyes piped up in his weak 
shrill little voice. Again the father sang 
the strain, and the young one in turn echoed 
it waveringly. Though he may have been 



ROBIN BRIGHT EYES 249 

discouraged at first, he kept on trying till 
soon he could sing as sweetly as any robin 
in the garden. 

By this time his two brothers could fly 
and hunt and sing too, and the parent birds 
were raising another family of little ones 
in the old nest. Every evening at sunset 
Bright Eyes flew away from the garden, 
over the pond in the meadow to a wood 
where thousands of robins roosted together 
till morning. After the nesting season, the 
birds began to lose their worn old feathers. 
As each fell out, a new one grew in its 
place, till every grown-up robin had a fresh 
bright coat. The young robins did not 
shed the strong long feathers of their wings 
and tail that year, though the plumage of 
their breasts was changed from speckled 
brown and white to brownish red. 

V. AT HOME IN THE GARDEN 

When autumn frosts brought stillness to 
the garden, when the last cricket had ceased 
its chirping, and no leaves remained whis- 



250 WONDERFUL LITTLE LIVES 

pering on the branches, the robins started 
for the South, where they could find insects 
and berries through the winter. 

Up and up and up, high above the trees 
and steeples, flew Bright Eyes when the 
old birds called him to follow. Away and 
away over the fields and woods and cities! 
Now flying light and swift, carried onward 
by the wind. Now alighting to rest and 
to hunt for cedar berries in the forests. 
Then off again, the small wings beating 
tirelessly, the far-sighted eyes scanning dis- 
tant mountain lines and winding valleys. 

After lazy months of loitering where the 
orange trees were blooming, Bright Eyes 
woke up one morning and somehow knew 
that spring was coming again to the garden 
in the North. Joyously he set out on the 
journey back again to the place where he 
was born. There to the apple tree he came 
flitting on a windy afternoon in March and 
paused to pour out a rollicking song above 
the empty nest. 

Before many weeks had passed, he had 



ROBIN BRIGHT EYES 251 

found a mate and was building a nest of 
his own. Cheerily he sang in the sunshine 
or rain. Gaily he worked, weaving the 
twigs and grasses in a crotch of the same 
apple tree. Then, bringing softened mud, 
he piled it around him against the curving 
sides of the nest, and molded it smooth 
with his breast, while his mate brought soft 
grasses to line it. 

In a few days four little blue eggs lay 
dry and warm in the new cradle. And 
by and bye four baby birds pecked their 
way through the shells, and lifted their 
mouths to be fed. All day long Bright 
Eyes flew busily to and fro over field and 
lawn. At twilight, when the shadows were 
deepening in the fragrant place, his eve- 
ning lullaby rang out in long mellow notes 
from the bough where his mate was brood- 
ing over the nestful of babies in the heart 
of the old apple tree in the beautiful gar- 
den. 

THE END. 



Miss Schwartz s Animal Stories 



WILDERNESS BABIES 



By JULIA A. SCHWARTZ 

With 15 full-page illustrations. 12mo. Decorated Cloth. $1.50 



The author is gifted with an unusually picturesque and 
graceful style. — New York Globe. 

A book calculated to inspire further study of natural 
history by the young. — Denver Republican. 

This book is better than a trip to the Zoo. ... It is 
everywhere pulsing with life and replete with interest. — 
United Presbyterian, Pittsburg. 

Contains a careful description, in language adapted to 
small children, of the young of sixteen mammals, ranging 
from the whale and the buffalo to the squirrel and the 
bat. — New York Sun. 

It is a relief to turn from the long-drawn-out, compli- 
cated, and usually tragic lives of animals as portrayed by 
so many modern nature-writers to these simple tales based 
upon the generally known bare facts of the babyhood of 
the wild folk. The stories should be entirely satisfactory 
to children, all the more because an emphasis as important 
as it is true is laid upon the element of play in the lives 
of these "wilderness babies." — New York Times. 



LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers 
254 Washington Street, Boston 



OCT 22 1 909 



